China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited has entered a strategic partnership with Alibaba Group for online ticket sales.

Alipay, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, will provide direct payment services for the online ticketing business of China Eastern's official website, while Taobao.com will have a flagship store selling tickets for all flights and all seats of China Eastern.

It is also the first time for Alibaba Group to partner with large-scale domestic airlines. Passengers now can not only buy tickets through China Eastern's flagship store on Taobao.com, but can log onto China Eastern's official website via their Alipay account, choose the flights they need and then pay the bill.

Taobao.com introduced its Internet air ticket platform at the end of 2007. Statistics provided by local media show that more than 800,000 queries are made now each day for ticket prices on Taobao.com, making it the second largest platform following Ctrip.com for buying air tickets online in China.