Aviation authorities on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong sealed an air services agreement yesterday, allowing 11 more cities on the mainland to be linked with the Special Administrative Region by direct flights.

The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, or CAAC, the mainland's aviation industry regulator, said yesterday that the new deal allows airlines to fly between Hong Kong and cities like northeastern Yanji, Weihai, and Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.

This brings the total number of cities to 56 on the mainland which have direct flights with Hong Kong, if airlines succeed in their applications to the CAAC to add the 11 cities to their routes.

The authorities also removed restrictions set on 35 routes between the mainland and Hong Kong, paving the way for airlines to use any aircraft model and to add any number of flights on the routes as long as there is market demand.

"It's difficult to say whether the major airlines will immediately apply to fly the new routes," said Li Shurong, an analyst with Guotai Jun'an Securities.

Visitors to Hong Kong and from Hong Kong to the mainland are expected to increase under the newly signed third supplementary agreement of the mainland/Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement.

The CAAC also allowed three more mainland airlines - Shanghai Airlines, Shandong Airlines and Sichuan Airlines - to operate flights to Hong Kong, analysts said.

Officials with several major domestic airlines, however, said yesterday they haven't applied to start services on the new routes, although they claimed they had already heard of the new agreement days before its official release.

Zhong Ning, an official with CAAC, confirmed the regulator hasn't received any applications so far yet.

Currently passenger and cargo services between the mainland and Hong Kong are operated by four mainland airlines - Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and Xiamen Airlines - and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd and Dragon Airlines Ltd.