The Canadian government will allow more direct flights for transporting passengers and cargo between Canada and China.<\/p>\n
Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon\u00a0stated Monday (April 20) that there will be “an incremental increase\u201d in flights linking the two nations, following Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s outreach trip to Beijing in January, the Canadian Press\u00a0reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said both Canadian and Chinese airlines will be permitted to raise the number of direct passenger routes and operate up to 20 cargo flights weekly, with “reciprocal access to all points in each country.”<\/p>\n Ottawa believes this move will support trade diversification and tourism, as Canada aims to boost exports to China by 50 percent by 2030.<\/p>\n Flight frequency between the two countries had been slow to rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic, frustrating Canadian businesses dealing with expensive travel and lengthy layovers.<\/p>\n Efforts to restore direct routes were partly held back by Canada\u2019s refusal to approve flights passing over Russian airspace \u2013 part of Ottawa\u2019s push to deter airlines from paying fees to Moscow during the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Visa-free travel<\/p>\n Since February, Canadian nationals have been able to travel to mainland China for up to 30 days without a visa.<\/p>\n As previously reported<\/a>, visa-free entry will be allowed for tourism, business, or visits to family and friends, with the policy initially in effect until Dec. 31.<\/p>\n China\u2019s visa-free travel policy brings both Canada and UK passport holders into line with 50 other countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan.<\/p>\n Don’t miss a single travel story: subscribe to PAX\u00a0<\/a>today! \u00a0Click here<\/a> to follow PAX on Facebook.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian government will allow more direct flights for transporting passengers and cargo between Canada and China. Transport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":{"0":"post-618847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}