This is a real victory for Nice airport, which becomes the first regional airport to obtain a direct air link with China. From August 2, Air China will offer three flights a week to Beijing-Capital by Airbus A330-200 with a two-class configuration and a capacity of 227 passengers, including 28 seats in business class. The airline has announced that the route will be operated all year round. For the Côte d'Azur, the stakes are primarily tourism-related, with the region's tourism authorities expecting 250,000 visits from Chinese tourists by 2025, compared with 115,000 in 2018.
Air China has further strengthened Nice airport's position. France's second-largest air hub with 13.8 million passengers in 2018, Nice already has the largest international network in the region. The Côte d'Azur hub had a total capacity of 640,000 long-haul seats in 2018, with a network of six intercontinental destinations. Delta Air Lines and The Company - Air Canada and Air Transat to Montreal, Qatar Airways to Doha, while Emirates is the only carrier on the hub to offer an Airbus A380 flight to Dubai. This summer, Kuwait Airways is also offering a triangular Kuwait-Nice-Paris CDG route, with two frequencies per week. These flights were launched at the beginning of June and will continue until mid-September.
The platform is working to better position itself as an alternative hub to major European airports. In 2018, the airport recorded just over 550,000 passengers on direct intercontinental flights, with the Middle East segment being the largest with almost 413,000 passengers. The arrival of Air China is expected to bring an additional 18,000 to 20,000 intercontinental passengers in 2019. To make things easier for passengers, this summer the airport launched the Nice Connect applicationThis is an in-house technological solution which aggregates the hundred or so destinations departing from Nice, linking them together. This solution is offered to online travel agencies, including business travel agencies.
