Sichuan Airlines restarts Helsinki-Chengdu flights

Chinese carrier Sichuan Airlines resumed its operations between Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU) and Helsinki International Airport (HEL) starting July 29th, 2022. The route is operated by Airbus A330 aircraft once a week on Fridays.

Before August 14th, the arrival time at Helsinki International Airport will be 4 a.m. local time, and the flight to Chengdu will leave at 6 a.m.

The schedule will change on August 19th, 2022, after which the flight will arrive at Helsinki International Airport at 9:50 p.m. local time and leave for Chengdu at 11:20 p.m.

This operation was initially launched during the summer of 2019 and stopped due to the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. The reopening of the route is an essential step towards the recovery of Chinese scheduled flights.

Also, flights to the Chinese port city of Guangzhou are being restarted by Finnair after a gap of more than two years due to the pandemic. A direct weekly Airbus A350 service from Helsinki is being relaunched on September 6. Finnair also runs flights on a weekly basis to China’s largest city of Shanghai, as well as a range of Asian cities, including Tokyo and Bangkok.

According to Sichuan Airlines’ announcements, it recently intensively resumed or planned to resume its international operations due to the boost of the traveling demand and the ease of the Chinese quarantine policy toward international travelers.