Chantilly, Va. – One month after winning federal approval for a coveted nonstop route to China, United Airlines launched its inaugural flight Wednesday from Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Beijing to the applause of passengers.
“Flights from the United States to China are always packed,” said Matthew Alesse of Buffalo, N.Y., whose work in the medical-device industry takes him to China about four times a year.
Passengers say more flights are needed as commerce between the nations grows.
Previously, Alesse would fly to China through Chicago, where bad weather sometimes led to delays.
Direct routes between the U.S. and China are strictly rationed by international agreement, in part because of busy airports in China and a desire to protect domestic airlines there from competition.
“China is a lucrative and growing market that is tightly restricted in numbers of flights,” said Mark Treadaway, vice president for air service development at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which runs Dulles and Ronald Reagan National airports.
When a new slot opened up last year, airlines and airports waged what airports authority president and chief executive James Bennett called “an old-fashioned, junkyard dog fight” to land the new route.
Zheng Zeguang, a Chinese embassy minister who attended special ceremonies at the airport Wednesday, said the new route increases the number of weekly flights between the two countries from 105 to 119.
Asked about allowing even more slots given the demand he said, “We are working on it.”
