Changi Airport signs MOU with Xiamen Airlines to grow China traffic

AIRPORT operator Changi Airport Group has inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a Chinese airline in a bid to boost passenger traffic between Singapore and China.

The MOU with Xiamen Airlines "formalises the partnership to increase air services between the two countries, and to grow transit and transfer traffic from Southeast Asia, Southwest Pacific to and from China, via Singapore", the group said in a press release on Monday.

It added that it will be working closely with Xiamen Airlines on shopping promotions for its passengers at Changi Airport.

Noting that Xiamen had the fourth most passenger traffic among Chinese cities for Changi Airport behind Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Changi Airport Group chief executive Lee Seow Hiang said in a statement that the MOU signing was a "strategic step to enhance our connectivity through the establishment of more direct air services to new secondary and third-tier cities in China".

Xiamen Airlines chairman and president Che Shanglun said that the airline launched its Xiamen-Singapore flight in 1986 and has continued to come up with flights to newer destinations in China.

From Singapore, Xiamen Airlines is the only airline that flies to and from Dalian, Fuzhou and Zhengzhou in China.