China Eastern Airlines flight MU563, carrying 248 passengers, prepares to depart from Shanghai Pudong International Airport bound for Delhi, India on November 9, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of China Eastern Airlines

At 1:02 pm on Sunday, China Eastern Airlines flight MU563, carrying 248 passengers, departed from Shanghai Pudong International Airport bound for Delhi, India, the first time for a domestic airline to resume the connection between the Chinese mainland and India after a five-year hiatus. 

China Eastern thus became the first Chinese mainland-based airline in 2025 to resume direct passenger flights between China and India. The outbound flight achieved a load factor of more than 95 percent.

The resumed Shanghai Pudong-Delhi route is operated with an Airbus A330 wide-body aircraft, with three flights per week on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the company told the Global Times on Sunday. 

China Eastern said that it plans to increase flight frequency based on market feedback and also aims to resume the Kunming-Kolkata route and launch a new Shanghai Pudong-Mumbai route, further expanding air links between China and India.

This route connects Shanghai and Delhi, serving as one of the most strategically important air corridors between the two countries. As key economic centers, the close connection between Shanghai and Delhi will help promote comprehensive exchanges in trade, economy, culture, and other fields, the airline said. 

Previously on October 26, an aircraft operated by Indian airline IndiGo landed at Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, a fresh start for the connection between the regions. 

IndiGo told the Global Times that the flight, which primarily serves individual travelers with a significant proportion of business and trade passengers, was fully occupied.

The airline has announced a second daily direct connection between Delhi and Guangzhou, scheduled to commence on Monday. 

The resumption of direct flights between the Chinese mainland and India represents the latest progress in the two sides' faithful implementation of the important common understandings reached between the leaders of the two countries in Tianjin. It is also an active move that facilitates the friendly exchanges of more than 2.8 billion Chinese and Indian people, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on October 28.

China stands ready to work with India to view and handle bilateral relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, and move forward relations on a sustained, sound and steady track so as to deliver more tangibly for the two countries and peoples and make greater contributions to upholding peace and prosperity in Asia and beyond, he said.

China and India enjoy strong industrial complementarity and have maintained sound momentum in economic cooperation and trade over the long term, which benefits both countries and their peoples. 

China has remained India's largest trading partner for many years. According to data from China's General Administration of Customs, bilateral trade reached $138.478 billion in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 1.7 percent. 

In 2019, two-way air passenger volume exceeded 1.25 million. At its peak, there were nine direct flight routes in operation, according to the industry news outletcarnoc.com.