(Yicai) July 2 -- A Shanghai Airlines flight took off from Shanghai Pudong International Airport this morning bound for Marseille, marking the country’s first direct flight to France’s second biggest city, as Chinese carriers ramp up international flights with many exceeding pre-pandemic levels.

The first flight to Marseille had 242 passengers on board and was almost full, said Liu Yanan from the network revenue division of parent firm China Eastern Airlines' marketing department. The carrier will operate three round trips a week. It brings the number of European routes operated by China Eastern to 19, amounting to 244 round trip flights per week.

Marseille is the second-largest city in France and serves as an important gateway to Europe and North Africa, Wang Zhiqing, chairman of Shanghai-based China Eastern, told Yicai. Before, travelers from China had to transit through a third city to reach Marseille.

The number of China Eastern flights between China and Europe has more than doubled from before Covid-19, surging 144 percent, said Lu Jun, general manager of the marketing department at China Eastern. And the number of flights between China and Oceanian countries has soared 129 percent. There are also more flights on many Asian routes than before the pandemic.

China Eastern is planning to launch 11 new routes over the summer, including from Nanjing to Melbourne, Liu said. It will also restart operations on three existing routes such as Xi'an to Budapest, and add more planes on 22 routes including Shanghai Pudong Airport to London Gatwick.

This will mean China Eastern’s international and regional flights will double over the peak summer travel months from the same period in 2019. And international and regional flights departing from Shanghai will surge 109.4 percent.

Other Chinese airlines are also expanding their international and regional routes and most have already beaten the Civil Aviation Administration’s expectations of a recovery back to 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels this year. Air China's international flight volume has returned to 91 percent of pre-pandemic levels, China Southern Airlines to 85 percent, and Juneyao Airlines is already running more flights than before Covid-19.

However, flights to the US are only back to 20 percent of pre-pandemic levels due to restrictions on ‘reciprocal air rights,’ where each country is granted the same number of weekly flights, industry insiders said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor