Air Macao has resumed its Qingdao-bound air route, with the first scheduled flight arriving at Macao International Airport at 2 p.m. this afternoon, eastday.com reported yesterday.

The Macao-Qingdao air route began operation in March 1997, but was suspended due to economic reasons in June a year later.

Air Macao decided to resume the air route to Qingdao, the capital city of east China's Shangdong province, after negotiation with Shandong Airlines, temporarily using 48-seat CRJ-200 passenger planes of Shandong Airlines. Larger-size planes will be adopted when passenger flow increases.

The resumed air route has three scheduled flights every week, on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. The planes will take off at 11:10 a.m. from Qingdao and return from Macao at 3:20 p.m., with the one-way time cost of 3 hours and 10 minutes.

So far, Air Macao has 10 stops in China's mainland including Beijing, Chengdu, Guilin, Haikou, Kunming, Nanjing, Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao and Xiamen.

(Eastday.com.cn 04/19/2001)