Paris Air Route To Shanghai Opens

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31169, 20 September 1966, Page 15

Paris Air Route To Shanghai Opens

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright) PARIS, September 19.

The first direct, regularly-scheduled air link between China and the West —a weekly return flight—will be inaugurated today when an Air France Boeing 707 takes off from Paris for Shanghai.

The passengers aboard the inaugural flight will be a group of about 40 French Government officials, airline representatives and businessmen, led by the Civil Aviation < executive, Mr J. Boitreud. All were expected to make the flight back from Shanghai. , On the eve of the inaugural flight, it was not known whether the South Vietnam Government intends to give Air France the right to fly over its territory. If not, the flight would have to be routed either over Burma or over the China Sea and Canton. The flight has scheduled stops at Athens, Cairo, Karachi, and Phnom Penh on the Paris-Shanghai run and at these same points on the way back. The establishment of the flight results from an agreement between the French and Chinese Governments reached last June —after several international airlines, including British and Japanese companies and the Scandinavian Airlines System (S.A.S.) had tried in vain to get flights into China.

their own aircraft. But they are not generally expected to exercise this right in the immediate future. The price of an economyclass return ticket on the Air France flight will be 5835 francs (about £433). Under International Air Transport Association rules, the Paris-Shanghai flight allows Air France to include fares from European points to Paris in the price of the Paris-Shanghai ticket.

Under the agreement, the Chinese have the right to fly the Paris-Shanghai route—with stops at Karachi, Cairo, and Tirana, Albania—with