In a positive sign for air travel between China and the United States, Hainan Airlines has announced the launch of a new route connecting Haikou, capital of South China's Hainan province, and Seattle, starting next month.

The once-weekly round-trip flight will start on Sept 26 and include a stopover in Chongqing, in Southwest China.

Flight HU445 will depart Haikou every Thursday. Both the outbound and inbound flights will include a stopover in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

The outbound flight from China will depart Haikou Meilan International Airport at 7 am Beijing time, arriving in Chongqing at 9:10 am. It will leave the Chongqing airport at 11:20 am and arrive at Seattle Tacoma International Airport in Washington state at 9 am Seattle time. The flight time is expected to be 17 hours.

The return flight will leave Seattle at 11 am local time, arriving in Chongqing at 4 pm Beijing time the next day. It will depart Chongqing at 6:30 pm and arrive at the Haikou airport at 8:45 pm, for an expected flight time of 18 hours and 45 minutes.

Hainan Airlines has been flying to Seattle, but via Beijing.

The new route will be the first from Haikou to the US operated by Hainan Airlines. It is expected to also support the development of the Hainan Free Trade Port.

In recent years, Hainan has increased efforts to resume and launch international air routes. As of May, the province had 46 overseas passenger routes, with the number expected to reach 62 by the end of this year.

The flight also could contribute to Haikou's efforts to attract international talent.

In June, the city issued the "Announcement on the Recruitment of Urgently Needed Talents from Foreign College Graduates for Enterprises and Institutions in 2024".

The initiative aims to recruit 342 talents from among international college graduates for enterprises and institutions.

Of the positions, 19 are designated for public institutions, 10 for statutory institutions, 61 for State-owned enterprises, and 252 for enterprises within the city's key industry parks.

Hainan Airlines, which was established in 1993, and its subsidiaries operated nearly 1,800 domestic and international routes as of 2023.

In February 2024, Hainan Airlines was awarded the "One Star Flight Safety Diamond Award" by the Civil Aviation Administration of China for achieving 10 million consecutive hours of safe flight.

US-China air travel, however, is still far below pre-pandemic levels and also has been slowed due to political tensions.

The number of international flights by international airlines from North America and Europe to China is down more than 60 percent this summer from the 2018 peak of more than 13,000, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing data from industry tracker OAG.

Chinese airlines, however, have reduced their flights on such routes by only 30 percent since their 2019 peak, the FT reported. And they are providing twice as many flights to those routes this summer as their Western counterparts are.

The US Department of Transportation approved increased frequency for US-China flights in February, allowing Chinese passenger airlines to boost their weekly round-trip US flights to 50 from 35, as of March 2024. Still, that number is only one-third of pre-pandemic levels, airlinegeeks.com reported.