On November 1, Chinese Ambassador Jin Zhijian visited the office building of ISAVIA, and had a friendly conversation with its new CEO Mr. Sveinbjörn Indriðason on questions of common interest.
Ambassador Jin pointed out that with the sound development of China’s economy, China’s outbound tourists have successively maintained fast growth for years, reaching 150 million in 2018. 90 thousand travelers from Chinese Mainland visited Iceland last year, 100 thousand are expected this year. As the first direct flight between China and Iceland is scheduled to be operational in the first half of next year, cooperation between the two countries in the fields of tourism and aviation will usher into a new stage. The Embassy would like to work together with the relevant parties in Iceland, to take advantage of this opportunity in order to actively explore cooperation potentials and enhance further development of Sino-Icelandic relations.
Mr. Indriðason welcomed Ambassador Jin’s visit, briefed him of ISAVIA’s business development, appraised positively the good cooperation between China and Iceland in the fields such as tourism, and discussed with Ambassador Jin on issues including improvement on service for Chinese tourists, strengthening cooperation between the two sides in aviation and so on.
ISAVIA was established in May 2010 by the merger of two publicly owned companies of Iceland, mainly responsible for the operation, maintenance and development of all the 10 airports in Iceland including the Keflavík airport. It also provides air navigation services for domestic and international flights covering a 5.4 million square km area of the North Atlantic. In 2018, ISAVIA served over 100 million passengers home and abroad, and handled with more than 60 thousand tons of cargo.