Overseas flights in high demand as Shanghai resumes international travel after lockdown
- Crowds of Chinese students were preparing to board flights back to overseas universities where offline classes are resuming this term
- Only about 10 international flights were scheduled out of Pudong airport on Wednesday, compared with dozens of domestic flights the same day
Students and expatriates in China are rushing to fly abroad after Shanghai’s largest airport opened to a handful of international flights this week, as the city gradually recovers from a two-month lockdown and the country eases inbound quarantine rules.
At Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Wednesday, once one of the busiest aviation hubs in the world, crowds of Chinese students were preparing to go back to overseas universities where offline classes are resuming, and foreigners were heading out of the country to escape China’s rigid Covid-19 restrictions.
“It’s certainly exciting to be able to go abroad again,” said Jason Cao, a Newcastle University student who came from Taizhou, a city in eastern Jiangsu province, about a three hours’ drive from Shanghai.
Although it is Cao’s fourth year studying at the school in New South Wales, Australia, it will only be his second time on campus as classes moved online after Covid-19 became a worldwide pandemic in 2020, and did not resume in person until this year.
“I should have been on a flight back in 2020, but instead I just took online classes at home for two years,” said the 23-year-old. He is flying out a few weeks ahead of the start of the new term in mid-July to make preparations.
Demand for international flights is expected to increase in coming months after universities in popular destinations for Chinese students – such as the UK, US and Australia – announced schedules to restart offline classes for the new term in August and September, as the countries brought the impact of Covid-19 under control.
On Thursday, Air China, one of the country’s major airlines, said it has resumed weekly flights to Stockholm, Milan, Madrid, Warsaw, Manila, Dubai, Phnom Penh and Kathmandu.
