This is the second air route that the carrier is launching from Vietnam to Chengdu after its Hanoi-Chengdu route.

The Da Nang-Chengdu flights will take around three hours, on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

Da Nang, home to the beautiful My Khe Beach and a neighbor to the popular ancient town of Hoi An, received 7.6 million tourists last year, 2.87 million of them foreigners, a 23.3 percent increase year-on-year. South Korea, mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong are the four groups of foreign visitors with the highest growth rates to the city.

Chengdu, the capital of China's southwest Sichuan Province, is famed for being the home of giant pandas.

China is Vietnam’s biggest tourism feeder market, with more than 4.5 million arrivals in the first 10 months, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, accounting for 31 percent of all foreign visitors, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Vietnam overtook South Korea to claim second spot last year behind Myanmar in the list of feeder markets for China, statistics released last month by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism show.

More than 6.3 million Vietnamese visited the country last year, double the figure in 2016.

Vietnam Airlines has launched many direct flights connecting Vietnam’s biggest cities with Chinese metropolises in recent times amid the boom in Chinese tourists.

On Wednesday, Vietnam Airlines also began services from Ho Chi Minh City to China’s Shenzhen City. There will three flights a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The Hanoi-Shenzhen route was launched Thursday (November 28) with four flights a week on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Vietnam now has six domestic carriers: Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet, Jetstar Pacific, Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO), Bamboo Airways, and newly-licensed Vietstar Airlines, a military-run company.

Hospitality group Thien Minh’s KiteAir, tourism firm Vietravel’s Vietravel Airlines and business conglomerate Vingroup’s Vinpearl Air are vying to be the seventh national carrier.