Air China is planning to start direct flights to Ho Chi Minh City from the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, a senior manager in the carrier’s marketing department, Zhu You, said Monday.

Speaking at a meeting with travel agents and tour operators in HCMC, he said the Chinese carrier had wanted to launch the service in 2006 when it began flying from Beijing and Nanning to HCMC.

China’s second largest carrier is expected to launch the new route this summer.

Another Chinese carrier, Sichuan Airlines, is also interested in flying between the Vietnamese city and the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan.

“We are here to study the air route from Sichuan to HCMC as well as other Vietnamese tourist destinations,” Hu Pingshu, the airlines’ deputy managing director and head of sales, who also attended the meeting, said.

People traveling from HCMC to Chengdu now have to fly around 2 1/2 hours to another Chinese destination like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, or Nanning before taking another two-hour flight to Chengdu.

La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said the number of tourists traveling between HCMC and China is growing at 25 percent a year.

China is currently the biggest source of inbound tourists for Vietnam though last year the number fell 18 percent to 527,610 because of the global economic downturn.

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