The aircraft is configured with 28 business and 269 economy class seats, and features on-board connectivity that will be available to all passengers.
The airline says that it will operate the aircraft on long-haul routes.
All of the SkyTeam carrier’s 787s are powered by General Electric GEnx-1B engines.
China Southern has a further 19 787-9s on order, which are coming from a mix of direct orders and via lessors AerCap and Air Lease.
Deliveries of those jets are scheduled out to 2020.
Meanwhile, China Southern Airlines Co. Ltd will be starting flights between Kunming and Islamabad from mid of this year.
This was underlined in a meeting of the Airline’s Executives with Pakistan’s Consul General to Chengdu, Muhammad Mudassir Tipu.
The delegation of the airlines Tuesday met the CG in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, and included Hu Yaohui, Director International Marketing, Ma Yun Deputy Manager and airline’s staff.
China Southern Airlines operates the largest fleet, most developed route network and largest passenger capacity of any airline in China.
The Airline fleet is ranked the first in Asia and the fourth in the world.
It operates more than 2000 daily flights to 224 destinations in 40 countries and regions across the world.
Hu Yaohui in the meeting underscored that, given the depth and breadth of China-Pakistan relations, Pakistan’s strategic location, it’s tourism potential, as well as Pakistan’s economic growth the China Southern had been planning to start three-day-a-week flights from June this year.
The flight will fly on Guangzhou-Kunming-Islamabad route.
The Kunming-Islamabad route’s flight time will be nearly four hour while the return flight will take five hours’.
He added that with commencement of this flight trade, economic, commercial, and tourism ties will expand between China and Pakistan and the broader region.
He hoped that passengers would be able to transit from Islamabad to other Middle Eastern countries via this flight.
The China Southern has approached the Chinese government to authorize start of the flight, the Director maintained.
The Consul General, Muhammad Mudassir Tipu welcomed the start of the flight and emphasized that it was a clear demonstration that Pakistan’s relations with China were vigorously expanding in a host of areas.
The CG hoped that as a consequence of CPEC and OBOR initiatives, as well as Pakistan’s growth trajectory, wider economic and commercial opportunities will be generated necessitating enhanced connectivity between Pakistan and the western China.
The CG underlined that in recent years Pakistan’s tourism industry was significantly flourishing and direct flights will provide impetus to both Pakistan and China’s tourism potential.
The CG offered full co-operation and support to the Airlines for smooth operations of the flight and hoped that Airlines will continue to deepen and expand its relations with Pakistan in future.
Tourism Observer
