Talking Travel: New Flights to Hong Kong, Chicago, Vladivostok ... and Ganja

Seems like the furor over MH370 is quieting down a bit, although certainly not for the families affected by what is becoming one of the all-time great aviation mysteries. I doubt anyone is interested, but if Malaysia is on your itinerary, now is a pretty good time to get good airfare and hotel deals there. Search for them yourself, they won't get any boost from this column for quite some time.

The first of the three spring long weekends arrives on Friday. No plans yet? Try one of these three destinations.The weather should be lovely there and it should only take about two hours from Beijing to doorstep.

A whole lot of new direct flights are about to come online. Most interesting perhaps is that Dragonair is adding more flights to Hong Kong each week, including a daily red-eye flight. Those new services begin this month. I can only imagine who will be stumbling onto the Beijing red-eye from Hong Kong.

The Air China Beijing to London Gatwick flight that I think we've mentioned in just about every edition of this column has resumed. We won't be mentioning it anymore.

Hainan Airlines will initiate non-stop Beijing to Chicago service starting in September. The flights will go Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. We still find it strange that Hainan Airlines flies anywhere non-stop that doesn't originate or terminate in Haikou or Sanya, but we're used to it now.

Air China will fly from Beijing to the Russian Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok beginning June 3. That flight will also operate four times per week, on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Kenya Airways plans to begin direct flights to Beijing and Shanghai from Nairobi before the end of the year, and increase its thrice-weekly service to Guangzhou to daily, making use of new Boeing 787 Dreamliners the airline has purchased.

And finally, although it has nothing to do China aviation per se, we thought some of our readers would like to know that Turkish Airlines is doubling its flights to Ganja. Yes, that's correct, you can now fly from Istanbul to Ganja, Azerbaijan, twice as often as before. That's not an April Fool's joke.

Until next week, one road flat safe.

Photo: Wikipedia.org