As Scandinavia's last capital airport, Oslo to get direct flight to Beijing in S'25

(newstodate.aero): Norway's Oslo Airport is today the only capital airport in Scandinavia without a direct nonstop connection to China. ???

This will change in 2025, though: the Chinese carrier Hainan Airlines is pursuing intentions to launch flights between Oslo and Beijing. ???

Having been allocated slots at Oslo Airport, the airline earlier intended to start flights from June 1, 2025, but is now instead aiming at launch of operations already from March 22, 2025, with three weekly rotations using Airbus A330-300 aircraft. ???

The planned new service will provide a further boost of air cargo capacity for the country's seafood exporters. ???

Hainan Airlines will actually not be a true newcomer to Oslo Airport; already in late 2017, Hainan Airlines applied with the country's regulator CAAC for license to operate five weekly flights to Oslo, including three weekly rotations between Beijing and Oslo and two weekly rotations on the route between Oslo and Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong in southern China.???????

Flights from Beijing were slated to start from April 2018, with flights from Shenzhen to be added from May 2018. While the flights from Beijing to Oslo were later realized, albeit with some postponement, plans for flights to Oslo from Shenzhen were scrapped.

Eventually, with the first flight on May 10, 2019, Hainan Airlines operated the route with a mix of Airbus A330-300 and Airbus A330-200 aircraft as the first direct non-stop passenger route between China and Norway. The route was however only seasonal and was not on the airline's schedule after the end of the summer 2019 season. ???

Sharing the pleasure with the passengers in the cabin were some 16 tonnes of Norwegian seafood on the lower deck on each eastbound flight.