If confirmed at the SCO Summit, the restart of flights will be closely watched for what it says about the trajectory of India-China relations: a tentative return to engagement, tested step by step, with the skies once again open for travel.

For years, business travellers, students, and families shuttling between India and China have had to crisscross Asia, hopping through hubs in Bangkok, Singapore, or Hong Kong just to cover a journey that once took a few hours nonstop.

That detour may soon end. Both countries are in an “advanced stage” of talks to restore direct flights, a move likely to be announced around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tianjin later this month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.

The restart of flights would mark a symbolic thaw in ties between Asia’s two largest economies, whose relations were jolted by the twin shocks of the pandemic and a bruising military standoff in eastern Ladakh.

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