Just for me to experiment some role-play style and also display our route maps
We hub in South Asia
“Good morning, may I ask about your airline’s routes to the South Asian region?”
The South Asian region is one of a kind. With 2 massive behemoth in India, you have to approach the South Asian region in a different way. Maybe you can consider ignoring India and focus on the other countries in the region, but what is with skipping the biggest country in South Asia?
The other way is to maximise your resources.
“We would like to welcome home grown airline Testlines to their 6th domestic destination! Testlines will start their operations in Tianjin Binhai on 13th March, with 4 times daily flights to Hyderabad on their A321-200.”
Over the last 2 days, Testlines started operations to Hyderabad from 2 airports in Northeast China in quick succession, first from Tianjin Binhai, and then from Hohhot Baita. When the flight routes was first announced, there was quite some surprise from observers, as there was never an indication that the airline would start another new Chinese city as hub. Testlines’ strategy and notion of a “hub” has always been different from other airlines. While they are primarily a point-to-point carrier, they prefer to pool their resources and aircraft from the same starting points. They started their Wuxi hub with an aim of splitting the A320s and the 737s to be based in different cities, but later started mixing both aircraft types as the airline grown rapidly and want to quickly expand their route network. And even till now, they continue to keep their focus on expanding their current cities, with flights from Ürümqi and Sanya helping to stretch the airline’s routes southwards and westwards using narrowbodies.
But back to the South Asia problem, why did they start flights with 4 times frequency each from 2 airports? That’s because they are starting to shift their attention to their “hub” known as Hyderabad - even if it means going into direct competition with the local airlines in India. Only Chengdu Tianfu - Hyderabad is not in competition, the others, even a potential route from Ürümqi to Hyderabad, are all in competition. But Testlines has an advantage of being able to get the gates in bulk, and that is their strategy in general - to just bulk run the flights in some cities.
Phoenix Airlines declares Hyderabad “focus city” following announcement of new routes from Ürümqi and Harbin
Chengdu - Testlines has inked an agreement with Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to make the airport their “focus city”, alongside 2 new route announcements that see the airline start flights from Harbin and Ürümqi in May, with a possible inclusion of Lhasa and other city on the cards in the second half of the month.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Testlines CEO Test Sir confirmed the airline has pledged to construct an airline lounge in the airport, the airline’s first outside of China, and stated that the agreement would allow the airline to chart new paths to bring Hyderabad to the rest of China. “Our motivations are still based on our original principles as a point-to-point airline”, he told reporters. “We fly from 9 airports into Hyderabad by the start of May, and I think this is just a first step in improving our connections to this beautiful city, and to give passengers in Hyderabad a cheaper option to get to different parts of China.” He mentions about the airline’s recent expansions to northeast China as an indication that the airline is keeping true to its intentions to fly point to point. “Hyderabad will just be a focus city, a city we play special focus and attention to. In our airline, we don’t have hubs in our vocabulary, we just have many of these focus cities where we look to expand our offerings from that city.”
The airline’s agreement with the local authorities comes at a time when the airline is looking to expand its long haul offerings. For instance, the airline is currently utilising the city of Ürümqi to increase operations into Europe as well as the Middle East, with new flights to Valencia (VLC), Trazbon (TZX), Buraidah (ELQ) and Venice (VCE) confirmed to start by the first week of May. In the coastal regions of China, the airline continues to look into ways to expand its route offerings, with 2 new routes to Auckland, the Chengdu Tianfu - Perth route, as well as expanding its options to the island of Guam. Some sources have reported that the airline is looking to close a deal on leasing 40 Airbus A350s split among the -900 and the -1000 series, utilising these planes to offer more flights into North America.
Bridging China and Indonesia
Did you know, that Indonesia’s biggest tourist counts comes from China? Indonesia also has very strong ties with China, with Indonesia offering Visa on Arrival to Chinese citizens, while China offers 240hours transit visa to Indonesians as well.
This is also why Testlines has been continuously improving our offerings to China. Currently we have a decent number of flights to Banjarmarsin, Surabaya, and Makassar, which are mostly linked to our big focus cities in Chengdu, Sanya, and Wuxi. The airline offers packages to Indonesians looking for a nice stopover in the country on their way to another country, and they get to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city before heading onward in their journey.
Catering to the Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are our two focus cities in Indonesia, namely Bali-Denpasar, and Lombok. The airline flies more than 15 times daily from cities across China to the respective cities, with a large variety of time slots available for passengers to choose from. These 2 airports are the biggest portion of China-Indonesia travel under Testlines, with Testlines even ferrying more than 60% of passengers out of Lombok.
Our plans with Indonesia reflect on the airline’s policies with regards to Southeast Asia. Rather than fly routes which are common, the airline has chosen to cast its net wide on a particular market, in this case, tapping on point-to-point travel in the China-Indonesia market.
Renew? More like Update.
January 26, 2026. In China, this marks the start of a brand new schedule in the country’s vast railway network. To many of the Chinese citizens, some of the trains they have taken in the past may be gone overnight. Some have upgraded themselves, going from older trains to newer train design. Others changed their train numbers. Some trains reroute. Some trains get a new rolling stock.
Route changes in Testlines come the same way. In the past, Testline has always been adding new routes. Recently, the airline seems ready to start updating old flights, adjusting schedules, and bringing in newly purchased planes to feed the fleet’s growing demands. In secret, the airline got hold of 14 737 MAX 8s, an aircraft type it didn’t have in the past. 4 of them are purchases off the used market, while others are waiting to roll off the assembly lines. They also got a purchase of A321neos and MAX 9s in the process, a handful of those. While the airline started new routes (notably the Wuhu Xuanzhou - Hyderabad route, four times daily), most of these aircraft looks to be replacing older jets on their routes, while some of the older jets go for longer maintenance checks or get offloaded to other airlines.
For the A321s, updating them to the A321neos seem to be a straightforward process. Regardless of the standard or LR versions, the difference is just 1.5 extra rows of economy seats - therefore no pax is really affected. The MAX 8 and 9, however, seem to have a slight problem - the newer planes have more premium seats, while the 737-800s has more economy seats. The MAX 8 and 9s are aligned more to the A320neos in terms of premium capacity - however, the MAX 8 is a smaller jet than the 320neo! This has led to a lot of headache in changing ticket sales following the arrival of the new jets.
The airline’s opinion is that this was a good time to update existing routes and improving some flight times. Testlines operates very reasonable flight times - however, some times are massive congestion at the airports, and to reduce delays, the airline might take the opportunity to re-pair flights to change operation schedules. Sources close to the operations team have eyed Chengdu Tianfu’s schedule as something that needs changing, however which of the new aircrafts will be used to update old flights is something that isn’t ready to be public yet.
6 months of route rationalisation comes to a close
On Aug 15, Testlines announced its final set of flight changes. Some routes had their frequencies cut - these came without surprise, especially for routes to smaller cities with less demand. Testlines used to just operate numerous frequencies to generate demand. The airline now realises it is more important to focus on having more point-to-point destinations.
A lot of the older aircraft were consolidated. Since March, the airline was focus on trying to rationalise its operations of A320-200s, 737-800s, and A321-200s. Inside sources said the airline was trying to make aircraft swapping easier. Previously, many hubs hosted a huge variety of aircraft types, now the airline hoped to consolidate its older generation aircraft to less places, first to help its maintenance schedule, and also to spread the newer generation aircraft out more frequently.
It didn’t mean older generation aircraft was retired. While there was some retirement, the airline kept with its plans for expansion. More narrowbodies were flying places. In the words of a high-ranking official, “We flew more long thin routes”. The airline was trying its ways with stretching narrowbody flights. Now the airline flies to more secondary cities. Towards Europe there were new names. Ankara. Belgrade. Tallinn. Tromsø. Towards Asia, more point-to-point flying was established. Testlines now flies to Surabaya from 7 cities in China. Mopa (GOX) now flies to 8 destinations within China. Denpasar has 9 destinations.
What’s next? The airline will still be using narrowbodies as its main avenue of growth. Recently schedule updates shows domestic routes being used as criss-cross hubs for flights. In particular is a pairing of flights in Kashgar, a major city in China’s Southwest. Despite having just 1 aircraft based there for its flights to Hyderabad, the airline has made no secret of its intention to focus on the city. Just yesterday evening it confirmed that it will be starting flights to Tromsø and Belgrade, on board the MAX 8 on a 6 hour journey. The aircrafts? Based in Fuzhou & Wuhu, and flying a criss-cross pattern where both planes will arrive in the city to let passengers swap flights. Unlike other major players in China, Testlines never had much focus on domestic flights to feed its hub business.
Testlines’ point-to-point system was never in isolation - it just meant they flew to places less traveled, and put less priority on the bigger cities. Its actions in Asia continue to speak volumes. Just last week, the airline signed an agreement with Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport (HLP), Jakarta, to start operations there. This will be the airline’s 6th destination in Indonesia, but the airline eyed the airport’s convenience rather than needing a huge airport like Soekarno–Hatta (CGK). The airline promises to put attention on frequency - it starts with a 2x daily between Chengdu Tianfu & Halim Perdanakusuma, and will follow up with a 3x daily to Wuxi Sunan Shuofang (WUX).
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