Airport officials could be poised to announce a non-stop flight between Calgary and Beijing within a matter of weeks, thanks to a game-changing deal between Air Canada and Air China.

The newly signed agreement, announced over the weekend by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Beijing, is the first step toward creating a revenue sharing joint venture between the two airlines. Pending regulatory approval, the deal would see greater co-operation between the two carriers on routes between Canada and China — with the goal of stimulating traffic growth between the countries.

“It’s a big change,” said Stephan Poirier, senior vice-president and chief commercial officer with the Calgary Airport Authority, on Wednesday. “Now it looks like within a few weeks, a few months, we should have a big announcement.”

A non-stop flight between Calgary and Beijing has been on top of the local airport authority’s wish list for years. Calgary currently only has one non-stop flight to Asia (an Air Canada service to Tokyo), and local business groups and tourism officials have been clamouring for direct access to the vast Chinese market.

Air Canada has been working closely with the Calgary International Airport on the Beijing file since 2010, but the challenge has been securing a landing slot at Beijing airport. To make a flight from the relatively small market of Calgary commercially viable, it would need to land in Beijing at a time of day that would enable passengers to connect to other destinations — and the Beijing airport is so busy right now that there are no feasible time slots available.

The hurdle seemed so insurmountable that Calgary airport officials had even started to explore the possibility of landing at a different Chinese city instead. But the new deal between Air Canada and Air China allows for increased co-operation in the areas of scheduling and airport operations, making a much-coveted Beijing route a possibility again.

“If it’s a Chinese carrier operating the route in co-operation with Air Canada, the slot issue with Beijing disappears. Chinese carriers have all the slots (at Beijing International Airport), Air Canada only has two daily,” Poirier said.

“The joint venture will provide customers of both carriers additional travel options through the expansion of code-share flights to additional airports in both carriers’ domestic networks as network growth is a core principle of the joint venture,” he said.

Cindy Ady — interim CEO of Tourism Calgary — said “the whole world” is competing for Chinese air passenger traffic right now because of the rapid growth in that country’s economy. She said securing a non-stop flight from Calgary to Beijing would be a major milestone.

“A direct flight out of China, from a tourism perspective for us, is enormous,” Ady said. “With the population base that they have, the opportunities for Calgary are endless.”

Ady added Calgary’s tourism industry will need to adapt to welcome an influx of new Chinese visitors, whether that means offering services in Mandarin or tailoring packages to Chinese interests.

“All of our tourism industry is going to have to prepare to welcome them as guests. Hotels are going to have to be ready, in particular, to manage language and cultural differences,” she said.

Tourism Calgary’s most recent statistics, from 2012, show there were 20,202 visitors to Calgary from China that year. They spent an estimated $10.5 million.

astephenson@calgaryherald.com

Twitter.com/AmandaMSteph