Tianjin Airlines to connect Los Angeles with two cities in China

Tianjin Airlines plans to connect Los Angeles with two Chinese secondary cities beginning in December. With this move, the HNA Group carrier will have three long-haul routes at Zhengzhou, a city of 9.7m people 660 km southwest of Beijing. Sichuan Airlines proposed in March 2017 to open the route between Zhengzhou and Los Angeles in October, but failed to follow through. The other city that Tianjin Airlines proposes to link with Los Angeles is Xian, which has 9.5m people and is 470 km west of Zhengzhou. For each of the two Chinese cities, Tianjin Airlines has applied to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to fly to Los Angeles 3X-weekly with Airbus A330s or A350s. The A330-200 in its current build standard has a still-air range with full payload of 13,450 km. Zhengzhou and Xian are 10,700km and 11,000km from Los Angeles, respectively. Although Tianjin Airlines nominated December as the start date for both routes, the timing could easily slip. <br/>