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Asiana to reopen routes to India and other nations as Covid curbs ease

Date: April 25, 2022 Omkar Patwardhan Omkar Patwardhan
Asiana to reopen routes to India and other nations as Covid curbs ease 
Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea's second-largest carrier, has reportedly announced that it will resume the route to India this week, citing the release of pent-up demand from the easing of virus-related restrictions this week.



After having suspended the service 33 months earlier on July 8, 2019, on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asiana stated that it will start offering one flight per week on the Incheon-Delhi route from Friday, this week.



From May, the airline plans to increase the flights on routes to Los Angeles, Sydney, Osaka, Hanoi, Fukuoka, Manila, and Ho Chi Minh City.



Air Busan Co., the company's low-cost carrier, stated that it will resume its services on routes from Busan to Fukuoka, Cebu, and Da Nang. These routes had remained suspended over the last 26 months.



According to the South Korean carrier, the Busan-Fukuoka route will be opened from May 31, while the lines to Cebu and Da Nang will begin on July 15 and June 29, respectively.



Next month, Air Busan also aims to launch five additional international routes from Incheon to Osaka, Guam, Tokyo, Malaysia's Kota Kinabalu, and Vietnam's Nha Trang.



Due to less demand, the Busan-Guam service has now been discontinued.



Following a travel bubble partnership with Saipan, Air Busan began offering one trip per week connecting Busan and Saipan in January. A travel bubble contract is a quarantine-free travel collaboration between two or more countries or cities with similar rates of COVID-19 cases.



Air Busan currently operates two weekly flights to Saipan and one weekly flight to Busan-Qingdao, in addition to five domestic routes. Before the pandemic struck the airline sector two years ago, it ran 25 foreign routes.



Asiana runs seven domestic and 25 international routes, down from the 71 it operated before Covid-19.



Asiana, the country’s full-service airline after Korean Air Lines Co., also owns Air Seoul Inc., a low-cost airline.



Air Seoul now operates three domestic routes in addition to the two weekly flights connecting Incheon and Saipan. Starting next month, it expects to offer flights connecting Incheon to Guam, Boracay, Da Nang, and Nha Trang as well.



Source credit: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220425000539

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Omkar Patwardhan

Omkar Patwardhan started his professional career in the hospitality industry. Having nurtured a deep-sated passion for words however, he found his way into content writing and now pens down articles for numerous websites, including News Origins, spanning the sectors of business, finance, and technology.