Chinese carrier Sichuan Airlines is adding a new link to Australia during the fourth quarter of the year with the launch of a second route to the country from Chengdu. 

The airline already operates flights from Chengdu Tianfu International Airport (TFU) to Melbourne Airport, currently flying three times per week using Airbus A330-200s. The route resumed in January after an absence of almost three years because of the pandemic.

A second service from TFU is scheduled to start on Oct. 30, data provided by OAG Schedules Analyser shows, connecting the capital of the Sichuan province with Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (SYD). Operations will initially be three times per week aboard A330-200s, rising to five flights per week by mid-November.

The planned expansion comes less than two weeks after China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism ended COVID-19 restrictions on group tours for an additional 78 countries, including Australia. This will provide a further boost for Australia’s tourism industry given that China was the country’s largest visitor source market before the pandemic, with more than 1.4 million tourists in 2019.

Since China removed many restrictions on international flights in January, marking an end to Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, capacity between the country and Australia has been steadily rising. China Southern Airlines has resumed flights to Sydney from Shenzhen, and plans to restart Guangzhou-Brisbane in November, while China Eastern Airlines has reinstated operations to Sydney from Nanjing and Wuhan. Hainan Airlines has also resumed Haikou-Melbourne and Taiyuan-Haikou-Sydney.

Although Sichuan Airlines has served Sydney in the past, flying year-round from Chongqing between December 2013 and February 2020, the route was paused at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis and the Australian gateway has remained absent ever since. 

The new 5,380-mi. (4,675-nm) service from Chengdu will now see it enter a market that was previously the sole domain of Air China on a city-pair basis. The Beijing-based flag-carrier provided flights to SYD from Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport between November 2016 and February 2020.

The launch of nonstop service by Air China helped to push O&D traffic between Chengdu and Sydney from 18,700 two-way passengers in 2015 to more than 61,000 in 2019, Sabre Market Intelligence figures show. About half of the passengers in 2019 traveled nonstop between the destinations.