Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd is looking to increase the number of markets it can serve in China and hopes to open routes to Beijing in the future.

"As an airline like us, it is an important strategy to fly to the three cities in China - Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai," said Steve Ridgway, chief executive officer of the UK-based carrier, in an exclusive interview with Shanghai Daily on May 15.

"We hope the next stage will be putting the second Hong Kong service in and one day we can fly to Beijing."

The carrier now runs flights on London-Hong Kong-Sydney and London-Shanghai routes and it has a code sharing arrangement with Air China on the Beijing route.

"The Shanghai route is performing well and it has been a long-term investment to build the market," he said without revealing whether the route was profitable. "But the industry is tough and rising fuel price puts a new level of pressure for airlines."

The carrier last year bought a 20-percent stake in Malaysia's budget airline AirAsia X, which launched flights between Kuala Lumpur and Hangzhou in February.

Some analysts saw the move as the carrier's strategy to further tap into the Chinese market.

The carrier has conducted the world's first biofuel-powered commercial aircraft flight, which used fuel based on coconut and babassu oil, as part of its target of becoming a greener airline.

"We didn't have answers yet about how to produce the fuel in quantity, but it's important that we can have it done, and the challenge now is whether the second-generation biofuel can be done," he said.

"Virgin is clear that it mustn't cut down rainforests, destabilize food crop prices and affect precious water resources to achieve the goal."

Referring to the "open skies" agreement between the European Union and the United States, Ridgway called for a liberal market and was adamant that the deal wouldn't be sustainable if the US insisted on their version of "open skies."

The deal, which took effect from April, allows EU and US airlines to fly any route between any city in Europe and any city in America, but European carriers can acquire just 25 percent of the voting rights in a US airline, while US carriers are limited to 49 percent.