Korea’s airlines increase flights to Mongolia on growing demand

Ulaanbaatar Chinggis Khaan International Airport, Mongolia [Photo provided by BGF Retail]

South Korean airlines are rushing to fly to Mongolia, which has become a popular travel destination among Generation MZ, and manufacturing companies facing labor shortages are bringing in production workers from Mongolia.

In response, airlines are planning to increase flights to Mongolia for the summer peak season.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Tuesday, the number of flights to Mongolia secured by national carriers has increased to 19 per week from nine in 2019. The ministry distributed 12 international routes in May this year, and more than half of them are to Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar.

Full-service carriers (FSCs) Korean Air Lines Co. and Asiana Airlines Inc. each received traffic rights for Mongolia once a week, while low-cost carriers (LCCs) such as JejuAir Co., Aero K Airlines Co. and Jin Air Co. secured the rights for three times a week each. T’way Air Co. was also authorized to operate flights once a week. All these flights are in addition to existing ones.

The airlines are utilizing the traffic rights to increase flights to Mongolia for the peak summer season. T’way Air will launch a new route between Daegu and Ulaanbaatar on July 28. It has also increased the number of its Incheon-Ulaanbaatar route to four per week from three. Jeju Air also increased its Incheon-Ulaanbaatar flights from four times a week to five on Monday. Starting from July 24, the airline will also launch a new route between Busan and Ulaanbaatar with three flights a week.

Mongolia is known as one of the airline industry’s most profitable routes. In 2018 and 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19, airlines operated nearly full flights with more than 90 percent of seats filled.

This year, T’way Air has maintained its high occupancy rate even as the airline industry has been expanding its routes, with an 88 percent of seats filled on its four-times-weekly Incheon-Ulaanbaatar route.

Since the pandemic, travel to Mongolia has become increasingly popular, especially among the Generation MZ. Local broadcasting station MBC’s entertainment program “I Live Alone” recently had its cast travel to Mongolia in response to this popularity.

The growing demand from Mongolia to Korea is also a reason for the increase in flights to Mongolia. This is because the demand for Mongolian workers, which was limited to the construction industry, has spread to the shipbuilding industry this year. The Ministry of Justice has expanded the issuance of non-specialized work visa E9 this year to facilitate the supply of foreign workers for production jobs.

The number of Mongolian students visiting Korean universities is also on the rise. According to the Korea Civil Aviation Association, 185,700 passengers traveled between Korea and Mongolia from January to May this year, up 36 percent from the same period in 2019.

“Mongolia opened a new airport in Ulaanbaatar in 2021, and it received a fair amount of loans from overseas during the construction process,” said an aviation industry official. “They are aggressively expanding transportation rights to repay the loans.”