A new air route connecting Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, to Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region will be launched on Saturday.

The new air route will be operated by China Southern Airlines (CSA) and flights will be available every Wednesday and Saturday, plus stops in Shangri-La in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Jiang Wenxue, deputy head of the Tibet autonomous regional bureau of civil aviation, said the new air route had good development prospects and great market potential, and would play a positive role in advancing the development of an air service in Tibet.

Because of Tibet's special geographic environment and natural conditions, the air service has remained a lifeline to development in Tibet. The service has been dominated by Southwest China Air Company which operates 11 air routes in the plateau region, dubbed the "roof of the world".

The entry of CSA into the market will undoubtedly begin a new round of competition in the Tibet airline industry, which will in turn bring down prices and improve quality of service, said Zhao Shujuan, a senior official with the local tourism bureau.

Zhao hoped that the inauguration of the new air route would bring more tourists to Tibet, as the new air route may help create a tourism corridor between the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, to Shangri-La in Yunnan and Tibet.

Tibet hosted 867,000 tourists last year, up 26.4 percent from 2001, including 142,000 from overseas.

(China Daily July 25, 2003)