BEIJING: IndiGo airline on Monday launched its daily flight from Shanghai to Kolkata boosting the air connectivity between India and China.
The IndiGo6E flight was launched by Indian Consulate General in Shanghai Pratik Mathur.
Meeting the IndiGo management team on the occasion, Mathur underlined the positive momentum, appreciated the growing confidence and enthusiasm being expressed through the booming air connectivity and the resurgent economic links between India and the region, the Indian Consulate in Shanghai said in a post on X.
Indian airlines such as IndiGo and Air India have started connecting Shanghai with metro cities such as New Delhi and Kolkata.
Kolkata is the second Indian metro after New Delhi now linked with Shanghai, China’s commercial capital.
Air China plans to launch a direct flight between Beijing and New Delhi on April 21, according to officials.
The new route linking Shanghai-Kolkata is also expected to push the development of India’s northeast, Mathur said.
Kolkata and Shanghai traditionally enjoy very strong relations with Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore having visited the city thrice in 1913, 1923 and 1931, he said.
The new connectivity will further encourage people-to-people ties between eastern India and eastern China, led by the two major cities Kolkata and Shanghai respectively, he said.
India and China resumed flights between different cities of the two countries in October last year after a five-year freeze in relations.
IndiGo operates flights from Kolkata to Guangzhou and Delhi to Guangzhou.
Chinese airline China Eastern also resumed flight operations from Shanghai to Delhi.
The flight services between the two sides were suspended following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. They were not restored in view of the over-four-year border face-off in eastern Ladakh, which ended in October last year.
The process of normalisation of India, China relations followed two summits between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Kazan in Russia in 2024 followed by a second meeting on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin last year.
Besides flights, India and China have initiated a series of measures to normalise their relations.
In July, India resumed granting tourist visas to Chinese nationals.