Australia & China sign open sky agreement

Australia and China have settled arrangements for an open sky agreement called “open aviation market” between two countries, as announced by the Australia‘s Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Investment on the 4th of December 2016. Under this agreement, both Australian and Chinese airlines will have an unrestricted capacity between China and Australia.

Australia‘s Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester and Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Steven Ciobo said the historic arrangement paves the way to further strengthen the bilateral relationship and offers boundless opportunities for Australian tourism and trade.

Darren Chester said: “These new arrangements will remove all capacity restrictions between Australia and China for each country’s airline which is an important enabler for increased trade and tourism.“

“We have also liberalized traffic rights and code share arrangements, which are important for Australian airlines. This will enable Australian and Chinese airlines to service destinations between and beyond both countries, and will allow them to take full advantage of their cooperative arrangements with their commercial alliance partners.

Steven Ciobo added that there is unlimited potential for Australian tourism following this historic agreement. He said: “China is Australia’s fastest growing and highest spending international visitor market. More than 1 million Chinese tourists visited Australia in 2015-16, up 22.3% from the previous year, and spent almost $9 billion during their stay.”

“China is our most valuable tourism export market. This agreement caps off a year of initiatives from the Coalition geared towards attracting more visitors from China, making our tourism sector well primed for the Australia-China Year of Tourism in 2017.“