First international trip by North Korean airline since Covid

North Korea‘s main airline has completed its first flight to another country since the covid pandemic began.

The plane called JS151 from Air Koryo took off from Pyongyang on Tuesday morning and landed at Beijing Capital Airport at 09:16 local time (01:16 GMT), according to information from the flight tracking service Flightradar24.

We do not know who was on the JS151 flight or how many passengers were on board.

The travel agency, Koryo Tours, mentioned that the route between Pyongyang and Beijing has been reopened so that North Koreans can return home.

Flightradar24 says that flight JS151 was flown on a Tupolev Tu-204 plane that can hold up to 210 people.

It is not clear how many people were on the plane that was supposed to leave for Pyongyang from the Chinese capital at 13:05.

However, Kyodo News stated that the check-in counter of Air Koryo at Beijing airport was very crowded with passengers who were wearing pins of the North Korean flag on their clothes and were pushing trolleys filled with bags.

The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Monday that they have given permission for Air Koryo flights to Beijing to start again. These flights were stopped over three and a half years ago because of Covid border closures.

Pyongyang has recently started allowing a small number of people to travel internationally again.

A few North Korean athletes went to China last week. They were on their way to the Taekwondo world championships in Kazakhstan.

Russian and Chinese representatives also traveled to North Korea’s capital in July to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Korean War ceasefire. They were the first foreign groups known to have been invited to the country since 2020.