Air Asia will launch flights from Kuala Lumpur to Hainan in May. The low-cost carrier already has four routes linking Kuala Lumpur to China: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Macao.

Established in 2001, the Kuala Lumpur-based airline has now carried more than 46 million passengers.

To keep fares low, the airline does not provide free food or beverages on board.

The uniforms of the hostesses raised complaints in the Malay parliament. A Wanita Umno delegate from Kelantan said the uniforms of the female cabin crew of budget airline AirAsia are too short and ’show too much skin.’

Kubang Kerian delegate Datuk Zaleha Hussin said the uniform was an embarrassment to women.

She called on the Government to compel the carrier to change the uniform of the stewardesses, which she felt was too revealing.
Source: China View

Do you know the way to San Jose? Well, yes. Go to San Francisco airport and instead of turning right out of the airport turn left. It is further that to San Francisco city, but not that much further. And it truly does not much have going for it as a town except a neat name and a catchy tune.

But San Jose has an international airport and it is not going to get direct right to fly to China. Not happy.

By 2009, it’s likely that travelers will be able to reach some of China’s major cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou — non-stop from any of several U.S. hubs, including San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Newark.

San Jose, and a nearby and also overshadowed airport, Oakland, are not on the list.

Michael Roach airline consultant of San Francisco-based Roach and Sbarra said, ‘The problem that San Jose faces, that Oakland faces, is that when people think of the Bay Area, they think of San Francisco, the big enchilada. It’s difficult to get anyone to pay attention to the other two airports.’

So there are a fair number of flights from San Francisco to Beijing and Shanghai and United is expected to start daily non-stop service from San Francisco to Guangzhou in the spring.

Cathay Pacific Airways will add a second daily non-stop between San Francisco and Hong Kong starting Oct. 18, allowing fliers to connect through its subsidiary Dragonair which flies to 19 cities in China.

Michael Roach said, ‘The air travel market is expanding in the same way our commercial relationship with China is expanding. If the relationship continues to expand in the next ten years as it has in the last ten, we’ll see a lot more travel.

‘It’s reasonable to expect a hiccup at some point, but no one sees that happening at the moment.’

China’s National Tourism Administration projects that 129 million people will visit China this year, an increase of 5 million over 2006.

But they will not be flying direct from San Jose.

Tony Tyler, chief executive of Cathay Pacific who was in San Francisco on his way to take delivery of a Boeing 777-300, said, ‘The market is not totally untapped, but there’s still enormous growth potential. The number of passengers passing through China was up 17% last year, so the market is growing fast.

‘It’s a sad fact of life that the bigger airports tend to work better because they act as hubs as well as points of origin. San Francisco has a range of connections to cities all over the place and can draw traffic both ways.

‘If you’re going to operate a maximum of four flights a day into this area, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to split your efforts.’

Currently, San Jose offers international service only to Mexico.

Source: San Jose Mercury News

United Airlines will soon be the first U.S. carrier to offer daily, nonstop service between San Francisco and Guangzhou. This brings to six the number of daily nonstop flights United provides to China, including daily nonstop flights to Beijing from San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C.; and daily nonstop flights to Shanghai from Chicago and San Francisco. United is the first U.S. carrier to provide nonstop service to Guangzhou.

The San Francisco to Guangzhou service will begin in spring of 2008.

Some facts which make it an intelligent route decision:

California has more China-bound passengers than any other state; more than one-third of all U.S. travelers to China are from California.
California alone accounts for over 57% of all U.S. traffic to Guangzhou.
San Francisco metropolitan area has more traffic to Guangzhou than any other metropolitan area without nonstop service to Guangzhou.

United Airlines operates more than 3,600 flights a day to more than 200 U.S. domestic and international destinations. United is a founding member of Star Alliance, which provides connections for our customers to 855 destinations in 155 countries worldwide.
Source: CNN: Money http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU18925092007-1.htm

In the 2007 summer schedule, Lufthansa offers 52 non-stop weekly flights between China and Germany, servicing the four gateways of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Now, through a strategic partnership with both Air China and Shanghai Airlines, Lufthansa has extended its network and services to even more Chinese cities.

Lufthansa was the first European airline to introduce native Chinese flight attendants on board its flights from and to China. And has been doing it for over six years.

Lufthansa employs about 200 native Chinese flight attendants. And the airline also supplies a wide choice of Chinese movies and audio entertainment.

On arrival in Germany, a Chinese Welcome Service is available to greet Chinese passengers in their language of choice and assist them on their travels.
Source: China.org.cn

United Airlines has applied for a daily non-stop service between Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong Province, and San Francisco in 2008.

A United Airlines press release said San Francisco has the largest Chinese-American population of any city in the United Sates and the proposed route would be the first daily, non-stop US carrier service between the United States and Guangzhou. The new route would operate nonstop on a B777 aircraft with a three-class configuration and 253 seats.

This is yet another example of airlines from the United States moving well ahead of China in operating international flights between the two countries. While the United States complains long and loud about a trade imbalance with China it keeps very quiet about airline routes. That is because the balance in that case is very heavily in favor of the American airlines.
Source: Shanghai Daily