At a press conference held recently at the Garden Hotel, United Airlines announced that non-stop flights between Guangzhou and San Francisco are scheduled to open on June 20th 2008 and that tickets currently are available. The round trip ticket for the first class cabin is RMB 90,000, the business class RMB 50,000 and the economy-class cabin RMB 6000.

At 12:35 on June 18th 2008, the first plane will take off from San Francisco. About 14 hours and 25 minutes later, it will land at Guangzhou at 18:00 (Beijing time) the next day. Then at 11:00 on June 20th, a plane will leave for San Francisco and, 13 hours later, it will arrive at San Francisco at 9:00 (American local time).

UNITED Airlines will become the first United States airline to offer a daily, nonstop route between Guangzhou and San Francisco when it launches the service on June 18 next year.

"The new Guangzhou service will be United Airlines' sixth daily nonstop service between China and the US," said airline China general manager Sidney Kwok.

The aircraft will be Boeing777's on which, there are ten seats in the first class cabin, 45 seats in the bussiness class cabin and 198 seats in the economy class cabin. Additionally, there are 84 seats in the luxury economy cabin.