China Southern Airlines to resume Guangzhou-Delhi flights after six-year break

China Southern Airlines will resume direct passenger flights between Guangzhou and New Delhi on 21 September, ending a six-year suspension that came to symbolise the deep freeze in relations between Asia's two largest powers.

The announcement on Saturday came just hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, where he is scheduled to hold a face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The airline, which is headquartered in Guangzhou, said restarting the route will bring its total South Asian operations to more than 100 weekly flights across eight round-trip routes.

Direct flights between India and China were halted in 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. They remained suspended for years as diplomatic relations deteriorated following military clashes along the disputed Himalayan border, notably in eastern Ladakh and the Galwan Valley.

Relations have slowly begun to normalise since the two countries reached an agreement in October 2024 to end their military standoff. Modi and Xi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in late 2024, and held further talks at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in 2025.

Other airlines have already begun restoring direct routes. Air India resumed services to China in February this year, while Air China restarted its Beijing-Delhi flights in April. On the private carrier side, Indian airline IndiGo began daily nonstop flights between Kolkata and Shanghai in March, later expanding to connect Delhi and Kolkata with Guangzhou. China Eastern Airlines also restored its Kunming-to-Kolkata service on 18 April.

Xi is scheduled to hold a formal bilateral meeting with Modi on Saturday evening, their third such meeting since the border breakthrough. The Chinese president is accompanied on his trip by Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Cai Qi, a member of the Communist Party's powerful Politburo Standing Committee.