Direct flights between India and China have resumed after a five-year hiatus, the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the world’s two most populous countries.
IndiGo flight 6E1703 departed India’s Kolkata airport at 10pm on Sunday and landed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou about three and a half hours later.
Flights between India and mainland China have been suspended since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, and continued after deadly clashes at the disputed Himalayan border escalated tensions.
The two nuclear-armed neighbors have since sought to reduce friction, reaching an agreement last fall to withdraw troops along their disputed border and resuming high-level talks for the first time in five years.
Yu Jing, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in India, confirmed the flight and wrote in a post on X: “Direct flights between China and India have become a reality.”
State-owned China Eastern Airlines also plans to resume flights between Shanghai and Delhi on November 9, Yu said, while IndiGo announced it will launch a new Delhi-Guangzhou route on November 10.
The Indian government said the resumption of direct flights would “facilitate people-to-people contacts” and facilitate the “gradual normalization of bilateral exchanges”.
There were 176 passengers on Sunday night’s flight, Kolkata Airport Director Pravat Ranjan Beulia told Indian news agency ANI.
Passenger Krishna Goyal described it as a “very happy moment” after five years of making the multi-leg journey, often via Singapore, for work.
“Earlier, we had to change two or three flights,” he told ANI.
The direct route will reconnect Kolkata’s thriving textile and jute industries with wholesale markets in southern China by air, at a time when Asia’s two giants are strengthening trade ties in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
Both sides also face increased scrutiny from the West over their relations with Russia as the war in Ukraine drags on. Earlier this month, President Trump claimed that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to halt imports of Russian crude oil, an issue that has strained relations between the two countries’ major trading partners, but India’s Ministry of External Affairs later said it was not aware of any commitment by the Indian leader.
Meanwhile, relations between India and China continue to develop.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China in August for the first time in seven years, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi responded by visiting India in the same month.
During a visit to China in August, Prime Minister Modi said India was “committed” to moving bilateral relations “on the basis of mutual trust and respect” and cited improvements in relations, including easing tensions along the disputed Himalayan border.
CNN’s Chris Lau contributed to this report.
