(Yicai) June 20 -- Chinese carrier Juneyao Airlines will reportedly open two new direct routes between Shanghai and Europe for the upcoming peak summer season.

Juneyao Airlines will operate three weekly flights between Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Manchester in the United Kingdom from July 1 and three weekly flights between Pudong Airport and Brussels in Belgium from July 3, The Paper reported yesterday.

In April, Juneyao Airlines added three weekly flights between Pudong Airport and Athens in Greece. With the new routes to the UK and Belgium, the company will have a total of six routes to Europe.

At least one-third of Juneyao Airlines’ intercontinental passengers are transiting, so the routes connecting Shanghai with Europe will help build the Chinese city into a transit hub, said Cheng Xi, general manager of Juneyao Airlines’ business department.

China is rebuilding its intercontinental flight network, so the number of flights to countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, Europe, Australia, and Southeast Asia will continue to increase, while those to North America expected to keep declining, according to Lin Zhijie, a civil aviation expert.

Air China plans to operate an average of 201 international and regional flights per day, with its average daily number of flights recovering to 84 percent of the level before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, according to the carrier’s summer and autumn season plan. Air China’s routes to Europe have already exceeded the level in 2019.

China Eastern Airlines has more than 1,240 scheduled international and regional flights per week, which is nearly 91 percent of the figure in 2019. The number of flights to Europe, Oceania, and the Middle East exceeded that in 2019, with flights on the routes to Hungary, Spain, Dubai, and Malaysia more than doubling.

Editor: Futura Costaglione