Great Wall Airlines to serve U.S. in June
Shanghai-based all-cargo Great Wall Airlines will from June add Seattle and Chicago as its first two U.S. destinations.
The airline will June 1 start a three-times-weekly service using a Boeing 747-400 freighter on a route of Shanghai, Seoul, Seattle and Chicago.
'Our focus for the rest of the year will be on growing our network to the USA', said Tan Kai Ping, president of Great Wall Airlines. 'We intend to introduce more frequencies and more destinations in the coming months.'
The start of the new service will mark two years since the Sino-Singapore carrier started operations, although it was forced to suspend flights in August 2006 when the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on one of its parents, China Great Wall Industry Corp. and all of its subsidiaries, accusing it of supplying Iran with weapons of mass destruction. The decision was overturned at the end of 2006.
Great Wall is owned by the Beijing Aerospace Satellite Applications Corp. (51 percent), part of China Great Wall Industry Corp.; Singapore Airlines Cargo (25 percent); and Dahlia Investments (24 percent), a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore-state-owned Temasek Holdings.
