National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines announced Monday it would open direct flights between the coastal city of Da Nang, home to Asia’s most beautiful My Khe beach and a neighbor of the UNESCO heritage site of Hoi An, to South Korea’s Busan.

Busan is the second largest city in South Korea after Seoul and a top holiday destination for foreign tourists including Vietnamese.

Vietnam Airlines has already been operating direct flights connecting Hanoi and HCMC, the country’s two largest metropolises, with Busan.

The new route, using Airbus A321 will begin operating every Tuesday and Saturday from July 20 onwards. The Da Nang-Busan flights take around four hours.

Meanwhile, budget air carrier Jetstar Pacific late last week announced plans to open a direct air route from Da Nang to Kaohsiung, a coastal city with the third largest population in Taiwan after New Taipei and Taichung.

The first flight, using Airbus A320s, will take off on August 10. The flights will take two hours and 15 minutes. The new air route will operate every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Jetstar Pacific is 70 percent-owned by flag carrier Vietnam Airlines and 30 percent by Australia's Qantas Airways.

Da Nang is entering the busiest summer of the year, with its signature international fireworks festival officially kicking off last Saturday night along the Han River.

Organizers said that the month-long highly popular Da Nang Fireworks Festival this year will be an even bigger spectacle than previous editions. The festival, on every Saturday, will last from June 1 to July 6.

The Manulife Da Nang International Marathon, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, will be held on August 11. It is the first professional marathon in Vietnam certified by the International Association of Athletics Federations and Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (IAAF - AIMS).

Da Nang is one of Vietnam's biggest cities and a major economy-tourism hub that attracts many foreign visitors, including Thai tourists, all year round, said Santisuk Khlongchaiya, head of Thai AirAsia commercial operations.

He noted that from Da Nang, tourists can easily travel to world-renowned destinations such as Hoi An, Hue and My Son relics.

Last year, Da Nang received 7.6 million tourists, 2.87 million of them foreigners, a 23.3 percent increase year-on-year.

Earlier this year, the New York Times ranked the city among 52 best places to go in 2019, dubbing it "the Miami of Vietnam."

South Korea, mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong are the four groups of foreign visitors with the highest growth rates in the central city.

Vietnamese carriers have been launching more international flights in recent years as the domestic market shows signs of saturation.

The country’s aviation sector welcomed 12.5 million air passengers last year, up 14.4 percent from 2017, according to the General Statistics Office.