It's official: this month Kunming will launch direct flight services to Dubai, joining a small handful of other Chinese cities with air links to the Middle East.

China Eastern Airlines announced last week that it will launch flight services between Kunming and Dubai on February 22. The thrice-weekly flights include one direct Kunming-Dubai flight and two with stopovers in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The direct service, MU755/6, will depart Kunming at 4 pm and arrive seven hours later in Dubai. MU2021/2 will also leave Kunming at 4 in the afternoon, arriving in Dubai around eight hours later after stopping in Dhaka.

The new air connection is expected to boost already booming non-oil trade between China and Dubai. Additionally, Yunnan is home to one of China's largest Muslim populations, after Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu – which should lead to more Yunnan Muslims visiting the Middle East as leisure and religious tourists.

The addition of flight services to Dubai is another step in Kunming's evolution into an international air hub. Since the end of 2007, Kunming has added flight services to Kolkata, India and Kathmandu, Nepal.

The biggest step forward in Kunming's emergence as an international aviation hub will be the opening of Kunming's new airport. The 12 billion yuan (US$175 million) airport is scheduled to open in 2011.

The airport will be located about 30 kilometers northeast of downtown, just past the town of Dabanqiao (大板桥镇). Considerable progress has been made on the airport since construction began in 2008, with the steel skeleton of the airport terminal nearly completed and base earth layers ready for the runways.

The new airport and other infrastructure projects outlined in Kunming's ambitious 12-year development plan, which was unveiled in 2008, promise to bring major changes to the city. Alongside construction of the airport is a four-lane expressway that will link the new airport with the eastern end of Dongfeng Dong Lu via interchanges at the second and third ring roads.

Also, the timeline for construction of light rail line number six, which will run from downtown Kunming to the new airport, has been pushed forward, with construction beginning next year. The light rail was originally going to be extended to the airport by 2020 and is now projected to be completed within five years.

Photos of the new airport expressway and airport construction site:



Dubai image: Dubai Travel Guide

Little more than two years after becoming the third mainland city to have a direct air link with India, there is talk that regular weekly flights to Dubai, according to a Kunming Information Hub report.

The emirate, whose tanking economy has made markets tremble in recent days, has already become a favorite winter destination for outbound Kunming tourists who prefer luxury travel, according to Zhu Bowei, general manager at Kunming Fengguang Travel.

Kunming Overseas Travel Center director Hao Xianzhong told reporters that China Eastern Airlines may be announcing the addition of a Kunming-Dubai route as soon as this month.

Hao added that given Dubai's current economic woes, Chinese travelers would likely be able to take advantage of better deals than before.

Kunming is currently building a new airport that will serve as a major international gateway airport for China, with direct flights expected to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia and North America.

Dubai image: tripadvisor.com

Kunming foreign trade up 43.6% in July
Kunming Customs announced that in July the city's foreign trade grew by 43.6 percent over July of the previous year, according to a Kunming Daily report. The total value of Kunming's imports and exports reached US$790 million, making July the city's biggest month for foreign trade so far this year.

Buoyed by a growing manufacturing sector, Kunming exported US$380 million in goods last month, with the total value of imports reaching US$410 million. Kunming's foreign trade for the first seven months of this year totaled US$3.71 billion.

Four injured after hospital sword attack
Four men are injured with three in critical condition at Kunyi Number Two Affiliated Hospital (昆医附二 院) after a group of men with swords attacked them at the hospital, the Yunnan Information Times is reporting.

According to eyewitnesses, four or five men wielding knives with blades as long as one meter attacked four men, during which time hospital security guards reportedly fled. Neither the men's identities nor the reason for the attack have been made clear.

A hospital spokesperson said its best staff were attending to the injured men. Some of the men's relatives have complained that the hospital is responsible for the attack because its security staff abandoned their posts.

China Eastern to launch Kunming-Jinghong-Bangkok route
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced that China Eastern Airlines has applied to serve a new route linking Kunming and Bangkok through Jinghong in southern Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, according to a Flightglobal report.

The new route, which is scheduled to be launched in October, is expected to operate seven times weekly.

Local party paper Kunming Daily is trumpeting the record amount of passenger traffic in the skies of Yunnan – the province's 12 airports now serve a total of 237 routes.

Breaking down the numbers a bit, Yunnan serves 204 domestic passenger air routes and 33 international routes. In terms of international flights, Kunming is connected to Southeast Asian destinations by 21 routes and South Asia by five routes.

This year Yunnan's airports, especially Kunming's, have been busy adding new passenger routes, in the first half of the year the following routes have been launched:

• Kunming-Yancheng-Harbin (China Eastern Airlines)
• Kunming-Tengchong (China Eastern)
• Kunming-Taipei (EVA Air)
• Kunming-Chongqing-Wuxi (China Eastern)
• Kunming-Chengdu-Kangding (China Eastern)

In addition to the above stable routes, the following temporary routes were launched earlier this year:

• Kunming-Chengdu-Beirut (China Eastern)
• Kunming-Phnom Penh-Nanning (China Eastern)

China Eastern is also preparing to launch direct passenger services between Kunming and Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, on July 17.

Beginning July 17, it will be possible to fly from Kunming directly to Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, according to a China Hospitality News report.

The thrice-weekly flights to Kathmandu will depart Kunming every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

The Kunming-Kathmandu route is the third direct flight from Kunming to a South Asian city. There are already flights from Kunming to Kolkata, India and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The new route is the third international flight added by China Eastern's Yunnan branch this year. The branch airline has also launched flights from Kunming to Siam Reap, Cambodia and Phuket, Thailand this year.

South Asia is one of the fastest growing trade partners for Yunnan – Kunming now hosts an annual South Asian Commodities Expo alongside the Kunming Fair.

Airfare for the new route has yet to be released. For information about Nepal visas, check the Nepalese Department of Immigration website.

Kathmandu image: journals.worldnomads.com

The Yunnan provincial government and the parent company of China Eastern Airlines have reached an agreement to form a new joint venture airline to serve the high-potential but relatively undeveloped Yunnan aviation market, according to a China Daily report.

The company, 65 percent of which will be owned by China Eastern Air Holding Company with the remainder held by the Yunnan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, will begin a new chapter in the historically strained relationship between the airline and the Yunnan government.

During a 2005 restructuring of China's domestic aviation industry, Shanghai-based China Eastern took over Yunnan Airlines from the Yunnan government, after which it ceased being an independent company.

China Daily sources said that relations between the two parties soured after China Eastern reallocated most of Yunnan Airlines' capacity to serve the Shanghai market, thus reducing the company's local market share. According to the source:


According to the agreement, the new airline's fleet will reach 40 planes by the end of this year and 50 by 2011. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed.

The deal's announcement comes as Kunming is building a new airport that is expected to significantly increase its domestic and international air links. The new airport is officially scheduled to launch operations by 2011.

In recent years, the relationship between Asian giants China and India has gradually shifted from vocal distrust to guarded optimism. With the political thaw between the two countries, an economic relationship has grown rapidly – in 2002 bilateral trade was a mere US$2 billion, last year that number surpassed US$51 billion.

As China and India continue to open up to each other, the lack of sufficient transportation links is hampering trade and tourism. With both countries eager to increase interconnectivity, Kunming is emerging as China's de facto gateway to India.

Beginning in June, China Eastern Airlines will increase its flight services between Kunming and Kolkata, capital of eastern India's West Bengal state, from four to seven flights weekly, according to Indian media reports.

Li Ji, general manager of China Eastern's Kolkata operations, told reporters in India that more flights will be added to the Shanghai-New Delhi route, which currently has only three flights weekly.

Li said increasing tourism between the two countries was the driving force behind the decision to increase flight services. At present, China Eastern flights between the two countries have full occupancy, he added.

Local politics in India, particularly the country's occasionally restive northeast, are also beginning to focus on increasing connectivity with Kunming. MP and parliamentary election candidate Sarbananda Sonowal, from Assam state's Dibrugarh constituency in the Lok Sabha (LS) – India's directly elected lower house of parliament – has become one of India's most vocal proponents of a road to Kunming.

Sonowal has been arguing for a reopening of the Stilwell Road, a former World War II supply route built in 1944 under the supervision of US General Joe Stilwell. The 1,700-kilometer (1,000-mile) road once connected Kunming with the city of Ledo in Assam state, with most of the road passing through northern Myanmar.

Rather than serving as a military supply road, Sonowal imagines a resuscitated Stilwell Road as becoming a new channel for trade between India and China. China's portion of the road – all of it located in Yunnan – has already been upgraded to a modern six-lane expressway.

The main obstacles to the road's revival have been the fact that it passes through Myanmar's politically volatile north, plus a general reluctance by the Indian government, which has voiced security and drug trafficking concerns about the road in the recent past.

"The reopening of Stilwell Road is important not only for people of ... Dibrugarh LS constituency, but also for entire (Indian) northeast, as it would re-establish this region's old trade links with China and other countries in Southeast Asia," Sonowal recently told Indian reporters.

Goods transported between India and China via a new Stilwell Road would take two days to make the trip. At present, sea cargo between the two countries must pass south of Singapore and through the Malacca Strait. Reopening the Stilwell Road would cut the distance between China and India by 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).

Yunnan's newest airport opened Monday in Tengchong County, near the China-Myanmar border.

Tengchong Hump Airport (腾冲驼峰机场) is named after the famed route over the Himalayas flown by the American Volunteer Group (aka the Flying Tigers) and commercial airliner China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) during World War II.

Today Tengchong is a travel destination best known for its natural hot springs and the rustic old town of Heshun (和顺). The area was also a major trade hub with Burma (Myanmar) during the Ming Dynasty.

The new airport in Tengchong County, located in Tuofeng Village, currently features three daily flights connecting it with Kunming. Yunnan Airport Group spokesperson Zou Huiyu said it will also add flights connecting Tengchong with Lijiang and Jinghong.

Travel time from Kunming to Tengchong was once a 10-hour bus ride, now it is only a 50-minute flight away. Last year Tengchong received 2.88 million tourists – a number that is expected to grow this year with the opening of the new airport. Tengchong Hump Airport is expected to handle nearly 300,000 passengers this year.

Image: ynxxb.com