Maldives Promotion House – MEGA Maldives has announced plans to hike frequencies to Beijing and Shanghai. According to Mega they will also be adding three more aircraft to its fleet this year.

The charter airline which serves Hong Kong, Seoul (Incheon) and Chongqing, operating six to eight flights to each destination every month, launched operations last January using a single Boeing 767-300ER plane with 252 seats, and took delivery last month of its second 767-300ER, which is configured with 24 business-class and 233 economy-class seats.

“We have the capacity to add two more aircraft this year, in addition to the two we already have,” Mega Maldives CEO George Weinmann said. “We are looking to fly to Japan, and in the long term to Australia,” said Weinmann.

While China is the Maldives’ largest source market which contributed 198,000 visitors in 2011, a 67-per cent jump over the year before, Weinmann said that “the challenge is to make this (the Chinese market) a repeat market. We are already starting to see repeat customers. It’s a small percentage of the total, but it’s important to cultivate this segment.”