Travelling to China becomes cheaper as relations with India thaw:Flying to become relatively affordable with resumption of direct flights

There’s a good news for people who want to travel to China for either business or for leisure purpose. It is expected that travellers will have to shell out a relatively lower amount while booking tickets on flights en route to the Dragon country from India. This is because earlier people only used to get connecting flights from here, but the government of India has allowed airlines to operate direct ones as well from Sunday, October 26, 2025. A quick glance of airfares on travel booking portals showed that airfares for direct flights enroute to Guangzhou from Kolkata were much lower than those of connecting flights for travel on October 26. Direct flight tickets available on Indo-China air route at around ₹15,000 While, an Indigo flight between the two destinations commanded one way fare of around ₹15,000. While, the cheapest ticket available on a day before on Saturday, Oct 25, 2025 commanded much higher fare of ₹22,000 in case of a connecting aircraft. The only cheap ticket available before the start of the direct flights is worth ₹15,951 which is available on flights operated by the Biman Bangladesh Airlines. But this one is a connecting one which requires a layover of 6 hours and 30 minutes at Dhaka. The flight would take off from Kolkata at 6:30 pm on October 23 and reach Guangzhou at 3:30 am on October 24. So, travellers are not only going to save money but also time while travelling to China from October 26, onwards. Background: An agreement was made between the government of India and chinese government to restart direct flights. The Ministry of External Affairs had announced this in a press release on Thursday. Shortly after the announcement, airline IndiGo declared that it would resume direct flights between the two countries from October 26, onwards. Daily non-stop flights will operate from Kolkata to Guangzhou. The airline also stated that direct flights between Delhi and Guangzhou would be launched soon. This air travel service between the two Asian giants was suspended in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Later, following the Galwan clash, relations between the two countries further soured leading to the complete suspension of direct flights. But people could still book tickets via connecting flights being operated by international airlines in India.