North Korean national airliner Air Koryo will next month begin operating a twice-weekly flight between the DPRK capital and the Chinese city state of Macau, an official from the Civil Aviation Authority of Macao SAR (AACM) confirmed to NK News on Wednesday.

In news first relayed by the AACM to local outlet Macau Business, Air Koryo’s new route will reportedly last from August 2 to October 26, after which its approval will need to be renewed.

“Air Koryo applied and we approved,” an AACM official told NK News.

The new route is significant, and Air Koryo typically only offers regular direct flights to Beijing, Shenyang, and Vladivostok.

A Western tour company working in the DPRK earlier in the month confirmed to NK News that the airliner would on July 19 restart regular flights between Pyongyang and Dalian.

Other new Air Koryo routes to Xian and Chengdu, announced in May last year and tentatively set to begin in July, have failed to materialize, however.

The airline has offered short-term charters to various cities in the past for only limited runs, including to Taiyuan, Jinan, and Yanji.

It’s unclear how in-demand Pyongyang may be for the residents of Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China known for its vibrant casino industry, though Air Koryo previously operated a service between the two cities in the 1990s.

Local magnate Stanley Ho is also known to own the Casino Pyongyang, based in the basement of the DPRK capital city’s Yanggakdo Hotel and staffed almost-exclusively by Macau citizens.

News of the new route also coincides with what sources have described to NK News as a “surge” of tourists from the Chinese mainland to North Korea in recent months.

Edited by James Fretwell

Featured image: NK News