AirAsia is further expanding in China with the announcement of a new direct service between Kuala Lumpur and Tianjin, connecting the Chinese coastal city with Southeast Asia and beyond from 2nd December.

The service — the only direct flight between the two cities — will be operated four times per week by AirAsia’s low-cost long-haul affiliate, AirAsia X.

AirAsia is also reinforcing its direct route between Kuala Lumpur and Changsha, doubling the current number of seats on the route in response to popular demand, by operating its fleet of larger wide-body Airbus A330 aircraft commencing 29th October.

AirAsia X Malaysia CEO Benyamin Ismail declared: “Together with our existing routes into China, today’s announcement means we are further strengthening our foothold in Northern China and increasing our overall capacity to China — one of our fastest-growing markets. We will continue to look for expansion opportunities that maintain AirAsia Group’s dominance as the largest foreign carrier to China by capacity.”

AirAsia now flies to 20 cities in China with 550 weekly direct flights from hubs in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. It has added 13 new routes to China this year.

In May 2017, AirAsia signed an MoU with financial services company China Everbright and Henan Government Working Group to establish a low-cost carrier (LCC) in China.