[Photo/VCG]

China Southern Airlines will increase round-trip flights between Guangzhou and Sydney, Australia to one everyday starting on Monday, according to a statement released by the airline on Thursday.

The aircraft is an Airbus 350 model which can carry more than 300 passengers, and the flight duration is about 9 hours, said the statement.

The increase of flights between Guangzhou and Sydney aims to meet the growing marketing demands, it said.

Meanwhile China Southern Airlines has planned to open or resume multiple international and regional round-trip routes from Guangzhou to Hanoi and Vientiane; from Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to Tehran; and from Shenzhen to Phnom Penh in February, said the statement.

In addition, the round-trip routes from Guangzhou to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and from Wuhan to Hong Kong will be also increased in the months to come, it said.

In another development, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, one of the country's major three aviation hubs, handled more than 4.1 million passenger visits with 33,300 planes departing from and arriving at the airport in January.

Meanwhile, the airport reached a cargo throughput of 121,000 metric tons in the first month of the new year, according to a statement released by the airport on Thursday.

An average of 127,400 passenger visits are now landing and leaving the airport daily, up 33.01 percent year-on-year, while an average of about 5,000 international passengers came and left the mainland from the airport, up 267.43 percent year-on-year, the statement said.

As of the end of Jan 28, the number of domestic flights had increased by 9 percent this year when compared with the same period of the previous year, equivalent to 89 percent of the level in 2019 before the COVID-19 outbreak, it said.

Also, the number of international flights has increased 64 percent over the same period of last year, the statement said.

The airport will further explore international passenger transport market in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa and Oceania and increase the flights from Guangzhou to the rest of the world in the months to come, it said.