Air France-KLM will introduce four daily flights between Shanghai and Europe from this summer, making the city the company's biggest destination in China.
KLM will increase its flights between Shanghai and Amsterdam from 10 to 14 flights a week starting on April 1. This makes KLM the first European airline to offer double daily flights from Shanghai to a single city in Europe.
Boeing B747 aircraft will serve the route, which will depart from Pudong International Airport at 10:10am and 12:50pm daily.
From June 11, Air France will also operate double daily flights from Shanghai to Paris by adding two more weekly flights.
"The Chinese market is growing. Traffic between Europe and Shanghai grew about 10 percent every year," said Sylvain Grados, regional manager of Air France-KLM Shanghai.
"Not all carriers are capable of increasing frequencies between Europe and Shanghai and some European airlines have even stopped their services. Only Air France-KLM last year increased the frequencies between the two regions and we will continue this year," Grados said in an exclusive interview with Shanghai Daily. Grados manages sales teams, looks after corporate key accounts and the distribution network.
After Air France and KLM merged in 2004, Grados' major task was to integrate the two sales teams when he took the job 18 months ago.
"Air France and KLM together operated 17 weekly flights from Shanghai to Europe when I came here, and now the two carriers run 28 weekly flights," he said.
He also increased sales on the routes by 50 percent in the period.
"Keeping successful relationships with Chinese travel agencies is a key point for growth as they bring the biggest part of the business. Now all the major travel agencies in Shanghai are working with Air France-KLM," he said.
Besides the carrier's own flights, Air France also has a daily code-sharing flight with China Eastern Airlines between Shanghai and Paris.
"We are very satisfied with the cooperation between Air France and China Eastern, and we plan more cooperation in code-sharing flights to Wenzhou and Wuhan," he said.