On July 8, 2016, Air China held a press conference at Shanghai Xijiao State Guest Hotel, officially announcing that the Shanghai-San Jose route will be started on September 1, 2016.
The service is Air China’s first Shanghai-North America route, marking Air China the only airline in China providing non-stop Shanghai-San Jose services. In the future, business and tourism travellers can fly between the Capital of Silicon Valley and Shanghai with non-stop flights.
Shanghai is the largest market in terms of passengers flying between China and the US and has seen a total passenger flow of 990,000, with an average daily one-way flow of 3,909 in the first half of 2015. San Jose is the third largest city in the western coastal state of California. Located in the Santa Clara valley, south of the San Francisco Bay, 64km away from downtown San Francisco, San Jose is dubbed the “Capital of Silicon Valley.” As one of major emerging cities in the US and a leader in the tide of technical innovation around the world, San Jose integrates science, technology and production, and converges a large number of high-tech and business talents as the city is home to hundreds of world-famous companies including Cisco, Intel, HP, Lucent and Apple.
The Shanghai-San Jose service is set to not only bridge China and the US in the fields of finance and internet, but also inject new impetus into trade and cultural exchanges between these two talent pool of successful entrepreneurs and businessmen. With this service, passengers from San Jose can transfer in Shanghai to other Asian destinations such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
In 2016, Air China will continue to build an airline network with Beijing as a global hub, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shenzhen as regional hubs, and Shanghai as an international gateway. So far, Air China has opened routes to 11 cities in North America including Washington, New York (Kennedy Airport and Newark Airport), Vancouver, and Montreal. Air China’s services have covered six major cities in the US. In the west of the US, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose have seen the operations of Air China. Every week, Air China provides about 140 flights connecting China and the US, satisfying the increasing demands of the China-US aviation market.
The flight number of the Shanghai-San Jose service is CA829/30, three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). The flight departs from Shanghai at local time 13:00 and arrives in San Jose at local time 10:10, and departs from San Jose at local time 12:00 and arrives in Shanghai at local time 16:40 (next day). The flight is set to be operated by Airbus A330-200.