Air China will resume the Barcelona – Shanghai route from August 27 this year, as announced by the city council of the Catalan capital.
The company will operate this route with three weekly frequencies, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The flight will depart Josep Tarradellas Barcelona El Prat Airport at 12:40 a.m. and arrive at Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 06:50 a.m. the following day.
The return flights will depart Shanghai at 00:45 hours and land in Barcelona at 08:05 hours on the same day. In total, it will be 12 hours and 10 minutes of flight time, on average.
The route will be operated with an Airbus A350-900 with three cabin classes: Business with 32 seats, Premium Economy with 24 seats, and Economy with 255 seats. The aircraft will have WIFI connection in all classes.
As this media outlet has been able to confirm on Air China’s website, for dates such as September 2024, economy class flights are available at a starting cost of €555 and upwards (round trip).
This recovery of the flight with Shanghai responds to the Strategic Plan 2024-2025 of the Barcelona Air Routes Development Committee (CDRA), which seeks to promote the link with the industry and companies in Catalonia and China.
The resumption of the route is the result of cooperation between Air China and the CDRA institutions (Barcelona City Council, Aena Airports, Generalitat de Catalunya and Barcelona Chamber of Commerce), together with the Catalan Tourism Agency, ACCIO and Barcelona Tourism.
This route had been suspended since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A year earlier, in 2019, the Barcelona – Shanghai route recorded 39,534 direct passengers and 107,587 indirect passengers. In 2023, 4,752 direct passengers and 21,982 indirect passengers were carried to Beijing, while to Shanghai there were already 54,668 indirect passengers.
With this route, Barcelona will also recover international connections via China with other countries in Asia, North America, the Middle East and Australia.