China Southern to restart Guangzhou-Delhi flights from September 21

China Southern Airlines will resume regular passenger services between Guangzhou and New Delhi from September 21, the carrier announced on Saturday, ending a suspension that has lasted six years.

The airline, headquartered in Guangzhou in southern China's Guangdong province, said the restart will take its South Asian network to more than 100 weekly flights spread across eight round-trip routes.

The announcement came on the same day Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in India to attend the BRICS summit and hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on strengthening bilateral ties.

Direct air links between the two countries were halted after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and stayed grounded through the more than four-year military standoff in eastern Ladakh, which ended in October last year.

Services have been gradually restored as relations have stabilised, following two meetings between Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024, and again during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin in 2025.

Several Chinese and Indian carriers have since resumed flights between cities in both countries, including on the Beijing-New Delhi route. In March this year, IndiGo began a daily service linking Shanghai and Kolkata, adding to the recovering air connectivity between the two nations.