The UK airlines British Airways and Virgin Atlantic announced resumption of flights to China's mainland, restarting routes they had stopped servicing when the COVID-19 pandemic started.

"After a two-year absence, British Airways is resuming flights between the UK and mainland China," the company said in a statement.

The first flight to Shanghai is scheduled to take off from Heathrow Airport, the country's main airport, on April 23, and the company will operate a daily service. Flights to Beijing will operate four times a week from June 3. The company resumed flights to Hong Kong on December 5.

British Airways says it first flew to China in 1980, and continued to do so without interruption until the pandemic, which grounded air traffic for months. The pandemic-related health restrictions that have remained in force in China continued to affect flights until recently.

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The news is welcome as travel between China and Europe has dwindled with the closure of borders. Air passenger traffic between China and other countries was only at five percent of its pre-crisis levels at the end of 2022, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) but that will improve now that restrictions have been lifted.

Virgin Atlantic also announced that it would resume daily flights to Shanghai from May 1 "for the first time since December 23, 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic", both for passenger and freight transport, according to a press release.

In October 2022, the company had announced it would not resume its link between London and Hong Kong, citing the prolonged closure of Russian airspace which lengthens travel times.

Meanwhile, Air France had already indicated last week that it wanted to serve Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong once a day from July 1, a marked increase in rate compared to the current frequencies.

Currently, the French airliner serves Beijing once a week, while two weekly flights to Shanghai have been increased to three from February 3, and it also serves Hong Kong three times a week.