Sichuan Airlines Co., Ltd. announced it will launch its maiden non-stop flight to Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region on Saturday.

An official with the airlines based in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, said it launched a test flight from Chengdu to Lhasa on Tuesday.

The non-stop flight between the two cities will be once every day, the official said.

Sichuan Airlines has bought six A319s from the European-based Airbus for 2.3 billion yuan (US$283.6 million) to fly the Chengdu-Lhasa route. The planes, in A320 series, are tailored for plateaus.

To make the aircraft adapted to weather conditions on the Tibetan Plateau, the company spent some 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) on refitting each of the imported A319s.

(Xinhua News Agency August 19, 2005)