After months of planning and preparation, giant pandas 3-year-old male, Bao Li [BOW-lee] and 3-three-year-old female, Qing Bao [ching-BOW] arrived at the United States Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) today, Oct. 15. They began their journey early in the morning in China aboard a dedicated “FedEx Panda Express” Boeing 777F aircraft. The approximately 19-hour, 8,250-mile trans-Pacific trip from Chengdu, China, to Washington, D.C., included a brief refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska. The flight arrived at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia at 10:30 a.m. EDT, where the pandas were loaded onto FedEx trucks before heading to the Zoo.
The pandas will now begin a 10-year residence in the United States capital as part of USA/China diplomatic relationship. (Reporting from Smithsonian’s National Zoo and NBS story).
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