China Southern Airlines will launch flights from its Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport hub to London Heathrow from June 2012 after around eight years of talks to introduce flights to the UK’s main international gateway. The carrier already serves Amsterdam, Moscow Sheremetyevo and Paris CDG in Europe but has been restricted from expanding into the UK market due to capacity restrictions at London Heathrow.
BAA, the operator of London Heathrow, confirms that it first started talking to China Southern Airlines in 2004 but because the airport is operating at 99.2% of its permitted capacity, the carrier has had to wait for suitable take-off and landing slots to become available from other airlines before it has been able to add the new route. “The UK has missed out on trade, jobs and economic growth because of the Government’s cap on flights at the UK’s only hub,” says BAA. “In the meantime the airline has flown to Paris, giving French companies an eight-year head start in building new trade links with China. Even now, Paris will have four times as many flights to Guangzhou than the UK.
The new link will commence from June 6, 2012 and will be operated on a three times weekly schedule using an Airbus A330-200. China Southern will operate into Terminal 4 at the UK international gateway alongside its SkyTeam alliance partners. The new route is expected to boost trade: more than 25 per cent of all global economic growth over the next five years is expected to come from China and Guangzhou is the country’s third largest city.
A recent report by Frontier Economics found that UK businesses trade 20 times as much with Emerging Market destinations that have a direct daily flight to the UK as they do with those countries that do not and the aim will be to increase the China Southern service to a daily basis, subject to available slots. According to BAA, the restrictions on growth at London Heathrow mean that the UK is missing out on increasing trade with China. London Heathrow’s largest European competitors, Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt and Paris CDG, for example, have direct links to ten Chinese destinations – Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, Wuhan and Xiamen. The UK hub is connected to just two currently, Beijing and Shanghai.
“Other airlines from major emerging economies would like to add new routes at Heathrow, but are unable to do so because of a lack of take-off and landing slots,” says BAA. “A recent report by Frontier Economics found that there were twenty-one emerging market destinations with daily flights from Continental European hubs but not from Heathrow. This lack of connectivity is estimated to be costing the UK economy £1.2bn a year in lost trade.”
An estimated 1.14 million O&D passengers travelled between the UK and China in 2011, considerably more than the 881,000 passengers that flew between China and France, the 337,000 passengers that flew between China and the Netherlands, despite a reduced network and flight frequencies. Approximately 1.21 million passengers are estimated to have travelled between Germany and China during the same period.
Already more than 30,000 O&D passengers travel between London Heathrow and Guangzhou with the main traffic flows being with Cathay Pacific Airways via Hong Kong, Emirates Airline via Dubai, Air France via Paris CDG and Qatar Airways via Doha. China Southern has a 9.6 per cent share of this traffic connecting via its existing European services from Amsterdam and Paris.
We would like to welcome more flights from China Southern and other airlines that could bring jobs and growth to the UK,” added Colin Matthews, Chief Executive Officer, BAA. “The centre of gravity in the world economy is shifting and Britain should be forging new links with economies like China. Instead a lack of hub airport capacity is causing us to fall further behind the rest of Europe.”
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