Continental Airlines starts New York-Shanghai daily non-stop flight

Continental Airlines has started a daily, non-stop flight between Shanghai in China and New York.

Thus Continental Airlines, based in Houston, Texas, the United States, and the world’s fifth biggest carrier, has become the first airline to launch a new cross-border route to China in 2009 even in the midst of worsening global economic depression.

The New York-Shanghai flight takes 14 hours and 30 minutes each way, and Continental Airlines is operating the flights with a Boeing 777-200 plane.

The New York-Shanghai service is the first daily non-stop flight connecting the financial centres of two of the world’s biggest economies, Jeff Smisek, president and chief operating officer of Continental Airlines, said in a statement.

The new service, Smisek added, would also make Continental Airlines the only airline providing daily non-stop services from three cities in China to New York – Continental has been flying between Hong Kong and New York since 2001, and between Beijing and New York since 2005.

Smisek said in the statement that China is “one of the most important international markets for Continental Airlines” and is “crucial for our future growth and success in Asia.”

Continental Airlines said its inaugural flight to Shanghai on the Boeing 777 was “90% full.”

According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, airlines based in China had suffered a 16% year-on-year fall in passenger traffic on the international routes in February 2009. Also, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has predicted that international air travel demand to and from China is likely to shrink between 5% and 10% in 2009.

The website chinadaily.com.cn quoted an aviation analyst at CITIC China Securities as remarking that the New York-Shanghai service would not be profitable in the short term, but is “definitely a golden route over the medium-term to long-term because of the importance of these two cities in the world’s economy.”

The growing importance of Shanghai as a financial centre, the analyst added, was attracting many airlines.

Meanwhile, United Airlines, based in Chicago, the United States, and a subsidiary of UAL Corporation, has said it would put off launching a non-stop service between San Francisco in the United States and Guangzhou in China to June 30, 2010. United Airlines had at first planned to launch the flight in 2008 and then postponed it to 2009.

However, Delta Air Lines, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, said in a press release that it would not change its plan to begin non-stop services between Shanghai and Detroit from June 2009, notwithstanding an announcement the airline made recently to cut international capacity by another 10% from September 2009.

American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the United States and a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation, is already flying from Chicago to Shanghai. But the carrier has put of starting a new route from Chicago to Beijing till the spring of 2010 in view of what a spokesman for American Airlines described as “the adverse economic conditions.”