Vietnam Airlines to fly from Hanoi, HCMC to Shenzhen

By Nguyen Quy November 6, 2019 | 04:57 am PT

Direct flights from Hanoi and HCMC to China's Shenzhen City will begin this November. Photo courtesy of Vietnam Airlines.

Vietnam Airlines will begin services from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to China’s fastest-growing city, Shenzhen, later this month.

The first flight will take off in HCMC on November 27, and there will three flights a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the national flag carrier said in a statement on Wednesday.

The four-times-a-week Hanoi-Shenzhen service will begin a day later with the flights on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Shenzhen is a bustling commercial city and a rapidly developing international metropolis in the province of Guangdong in southeast China. It is best known for shopping and entertainment, thanks to large malls and family-friendly amusement parks.

China is Vietnam’s biggest tourism feeder market, with more than 4.5 million Chinese visiting in the first 10 months, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, accounting for 31 percent of all foreign visitors, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Vietnam overtook South Korea to claim second spot last year behind Myanmar in the list of feeder markets for China, statistics released last month by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism show.

More than 6.3 million Vietnamese visited the country last year, double the figure in 2016.