A. Tchaikovsky/ Airbus
On April 28th, the flight connecting São Paulo (Guarulhos) to Beijing carried out by Air China will resume operations, after a three-year hiatus in which it was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With one connection in Madridin Spain, the flight will be operated twice a week (on Wednesdays and Saturdays) by the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, with capacity for 293 passengers.
This could be an advantage for Brazilians, who today, to fly from São Paulo to Beijing, need to make connections at more than one destination, changing planes in places such as Africa, the Middle East and Europe, which makes the duration of the trip lasting approximately 30 hours or more. With the return of the Air China flight, this journey time will be reduced to 22 hours and 25 minutes, as the route has a single stop in the Spanish capital. Still, this is the longest flight carried out with the same Boeing 787 aircraft.
Visa exemption and other measures to attract more tourists
The Beijing-Madrid-São Paulo flight is part of Air China’s effort to bring more visitors to the Asian country. The measure is just one of a series of actions, which include visa exemptions for several countries.
The first to be exempt from the visa was Norway, in November last year. The following month, China dropped visa requirements for five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain), as well as Malaysia, in Southeast Asia. Next came Thailand and Singapore, cases in which there was reciprocity. Two weeks ago, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary were added.
Brazil and China signed a bilateral cooperation agreement in January that extends the validity of visas for passports of citizens of both countries to ten years. The new validity period is double the current one, five years.
The measures are already showing results: in the first months of this year. The volume of foreigners entering and leaving China has already reached 41.5% of what was recorded in the same period, before the pandemic.
With information from Newspaper.
