China Southern Airline is all set to launch six international routes to destinations in Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Turkey. The airline has scheduled services between Guangzhou and Istanbul from early 2023 with twice weekly services from January 10, 2023 on 787-9s. This route will be China Sothern's second service to the Turkish city along with its weekly flight from Wuhan.
The airline has also announced plans to launch flights between Almaty and the Chinese city of Xi’an from December 23, 2022 according to Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee. The airline will operate 737-800s on the new non-stop route. The airline earlier provided regular service to Almaty and Nur-Sultan from Urumqi until the onset of the pandemic.
“As part of the ongoing work on resuming international traffic and establishing new routes, the Civil Aviation Committee and the Chinese aviation authorities have worked out the issue of increasing regular passenger flights between Kazakhstan and China, taking into account the restrictions of the Chinese side on the frequency and the number of destinations,” read the committee’s statement
Apart from the above the airline is also planning scheduled two new services from Zhengzhou and additional flights from Shenzhen, Xi’an, Nanning and Guangzhou.
The relaxing of pandemic norms by the Chinese government has already started showing positive signs on air travel in China. The domestic airline capacity is already increased by 1.9 million weekly seats from 1.7 million till November end. By January the Chinese operators expects the figure to climb to 2.4 million, a 7% rise from the pre-pandemic levels. The international capacity from China is also seeing a 20% rise from November 2022, showing signs of robust market recovery.