Austrian Airlines will launch services to Shanghai from April 4, 2016. Austria’s national carrier will operate a Boeing 777 to Shanghai throughout the entire year with an initial five times a week frequency, increasingly to daily as of May 1, 2016.

This is the airline’s second destination in China, in addition to Beijing. The flight time from Vienna to Shanghai, at a distance of more than 8,500 kilometers, will be about 10 hours 20 minutes. The destination is not only interesting as a point-to-point route but also for transfer traffic. About two-thirds of passengers will transfer at the Vienna hub and continue their journeys, flying particularly to Western and Eastern European destinations.

At present Austrian Airlines offers a total of 26 weekly nonstop flights to Asia in its summer flight schedule. In addition to five flights per week to Beijing, the airline also offers up to seven flights per week to Delhi, operating a Boeing 767, to Bangkok and Tokyo daily on a Boeing 777, and will add a weekly service to Colombo, Sri Lanka, starting October 27, 2015.

“Shanghai will complement our offering to the most important cities of Asia very well”, says chief commercial officer Andreas Otto. “In this way we are resolutely expanding flight service on long-haul routes.”

Austrian Airlines had already included Shanghai in its flight schedule starting on April 28, 2004. However, flight service was terminated in January 2007 as part of the redimensioning of the airline’s long-haul fleet and the related decommissioning of all its Airbus A330 and A340 long-haul aircraft. www.austrian.com