Hong Kong’s Greater Bay Airlines launches new route to Zhoushan, site of sacred Mount Putuo

City offers direct route for travellers and pilgrims wanting to visit Mount Putuo, one of four mountains on the mainland sacred to Buddhists

Reading Time:3 minutes

Mount Putuo in the mainland Chinese city of Zhoushan. Photo: Facebook

Published: 7:30am, 12 Nov 2024Updated: 7:36am, 12 Nov 2024

Hong Kong’s Greater Bay Airlines has launched flights to Zhoushan, a mainland Chinese city known for its Buddhist pilgrimage site of Mount Putuo, adding a new route that will soon be followed by three others, even as it recently cut a flight to Haikou that began in late July.

The carrier debuted the route to the largest of a cluster of islands off the eastern China coast last week, not long after launching a new flight to Japan’s Yonago in late October. The airline has plans to add Tokushima on November 16, Huangshan on December 4 and Sendai on December 7.

The new routes will expand the network of Hong Kong’s smallest airline to 11 destinations by the end of this year, despite the suspension of a few others this year.

It recently stopped offering flights to Haikou that started in July and earlier suspended flights to Singapore launched in April after just over a month. The carrier also axed its Ho Chi Minh City route in February after beginning the service last July.

Airline CEO Liza Ng Shiow-lan said last Friday that the new routes were part of the carrier’s ambition to cover routes less travelled across China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

She added the company was now also eyeing gateways to the famous Three Gorges on the Yangtze River, a major tourist attraction in central China known for cruise trips to the Three Gorges Dam, one of the largest in the world.