China Southern Introduces Canton Route to London

Aviation observers are speculating that the new 787 may operate China Southern's Canton Route

China Southern Airlines has introduced the Canton Route to Europe, capitalising on new scheduled services from its Guangzhou hub to London Heathrow in June.

Announcing the new three flights a week schedule in Sydney, China Southern Executive Vice President He Zongkai said he hoped the Canton Route would become as popular as the Kangaroo Route for Australians travelling to London and Europe.

“This June we will launch a new Guangzhou-London air service and increase flight frequencies on our Guangzhou-Paris and Guangzhou-Amsterdam services to make Guangzhou an ideal transfer hub between Australia and Europe,” he said.

“I would like to call this air link the Canton Route.”

Mr He is leading a high-powered China Southern delegation for the 2012 Sydney Festival, which China Southern has joined as a leading sponsor and official airline. He is to be joined later in the Festival by China Southern’s President and CEO, Mr Tan Wangeng.

He told thousands of Sydneysiders attending the popular Summer Sounds in the Domain concert on Saturday night that China Southern saw its support for the Sydney Festival as an important way to strengthen relations with NSW and the rest of Australia.

“Since last year, China Southern Airlines has operated double daily flights between Sydney and Guangzhou,” Mr He said.

“We have increased the frequency of our Melbourne-Guangzhou service to double daily, extended our Brisbane-Guangzhou route to Beijing, and launched a new Perth–Guangzhou-Beijing service with three weekly flights.

“China Southern presently operates 35 weekly flights from Australia to Guangzhou … and we expect that by the end of 2015 we will operate more than 110 weekly round-trip flights from Australia.”

Notes to editors:

Guangzhou-based China Southern Airlines (code CZ) has operated into Australia for more than 10 years. It now flies twice daily between Sydney and Guangzhou, twice daily from Melbourne, four times a week from Brisbane and three times a week from Perth. It operates the largest airline fleet in Asia and with more than 80 million passengers carried in 2011 it is the third largest carrier in the world.