An air route will open between Macao, a special administrative region in south China, and Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province, as of April 20.

Xiamen Airlines will operate the route with approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

A Boeing-737 or Boeing-757 airliner will fly on the route every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, according to a news release from the air carrier Wednesday.

Xiamen Airlines has opened routes to Macao from the cities of Fuzhou, Xiamen and Wuyishan in east China's Fujian Province since 1996.

Song Chengren, deputy manager of the airline, said that the new air route will bring new vitality to the tourism business across the Taiwan Straits. Owing to no direct aviation links between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, many Taiwan travelers between the two places will choose Macao as their transfer station.

"If the business is done well, we will increase the number of flights to one per day," he said.

Xiamen Airlines has been making profits for 14 continuous years amid sluggish aviation business as a whole in China. It has 23 Boeing aircraft.

(People’s Daily 03/21/2001)