To commemorate its 16th year of operations in the Chinese mainland, Egypt's flag carrier airline EgyptAir and the Egypt Embassy in Beijing held a ceremony at the embassy on Friday. The ceremony also celebrated the recent opening of a new direct route from Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, to Egyptian capital city, Cairo.

This new route, which flies twice a week, brings the total number of EgyptAir direct flights between the Chinese mainland and Egypt to three and is a welcoming addition to the previous daily Guangzhou-Cairo route and the Beijing-Cairo route that operates three times a week.

Egyptian Ambassador to China Mohamed Elbadri told that around 450,000 Chinese visited Egypt in 2018, a majority of whom were tourists. The embassy is determined to make efforts to increase Chinese travel to the country. The embassy is planning to organize more promotional and outreach campaigns such as holding exhibitions of Egyptian relics in China to attract more Chinese tourists to visit Egypt.

"Being the sons and daughters of the two oldest civilizations in the world," the ambassador has faith that admiration of each country's long history and culture will inspire more frequent travels between the two.

Kamal Refaat, manager of EgyptAir's Beijing Branch, told that the average capacity of flights from Hangzhou to Cairo is nearly 80 percent, well within expectations for such a great commercial port in China.