China Southern Airlines—the country’s largest carrier by fleet size—will operate more than 126,000 passenger flights between 2 February and 13 March to cope with the annual ‘Chunyun’ migration. The figure represents a 15 per cent increase on the 2025 season and includes 13,000 ad-hoc services on over 260 city-pairs.
Domestically, capacity will be concentrated on ‘ice-and-snow’ destinations such as Harbin, Changchun and Altay as well as on Hainan’s tropical resort cities, matching the twin consumer trends of winter sports and warm-weather escapes. Wide-body jets will be deployed on high-demand trunk routes like Shenzhen–Beijing Daxing to maximise seat supply.
Internationally, the airline plans 16,000 flights—boosted by China’s expanding visa-free agreements and nine-day Spring Festival public holiday. New Guangzhou–Madrid and Guangzhou–Darwin routes, plus reinstated Perth and Adelaide services, will push Australia rotations to a record 77 round-trips per week. Flights to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Chiang Mai will exceed 500 weekly frequencies, reflecting the rebound in Southeast Asian leisure travel.
![China Southern Airlines Schedules Record 126,000 Flights for 40-Day Spring Festival Rush]()
While China’s visa-free initiatives will simplify entry for many nationalities, thousands of passengers on multi-leg Chunyun journeys will still need formal documents. VisaHQ’s online platform (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines Chinese visa applications and any supplementary permits, giving both corporate travel planners and holidaymakers a quick, reliable way to avoid last-minute paperwork hurdles amid the peak-season rush.
For corporate mobility managers the schedule offers more flexibility for expatriate returns and last-minute business trips, but also highlights potential congestion: Beijing Capital, Guangzhou Baiyun and Shanghai Pudong airports are forecasting peak-day passenger volumes 20-25 per cent higher than last year. China Southern is rolling out ‘instant boarding’ facial-recognition gates at Guangzhou and integrating real-time terminal navigation into its app to ease the crush. Logistics units will run 900 dedicated freighter flights, prioritising fresh produce and festival gift exports.
The aggressive expansion underscores how Chinese carriers are banking on a full recovery in both domestic and outbound demand in 2026, even as global capacity constraints and geopolitical uncertainties linger.
Domestically, capacity will be concentrated on ‘ice-and-snow’ destinations such as Harbin, Changchun and Altay as well as on Hainan’s tropical resort cities, matching the twin consumer trends of winter sports and warm-weather escapes. Wide-body jets will be deployed on high-demand trunk routes like Shenzhen–Beijing Daxing to maximise seat supply.
Internationally, the airline plans 16,000 flights—boosted by China’s expanding visa-free agreements and nine-day Spring Festival public holiday. New Guangzhou–Madrid and Guangzhou–Darwin routes, plus reinstated Perth and Adelaide services, will push Australia rotations to a record 77 round-trips per week. Flights to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Chiang Mai will exceed 500 weekly frequencies, reflecting the rebound in Southeast Asian leisure travel.
While China’s visa-free initiatives will simplify entry for many nationalities, thousands of passengers on multi-leg Chunyun journeys will still need formal documents. VisaHQ’s online platform (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines Chinese visa applications and any supplementary permits, giving both corporate travel planners and holidaymakers a quick, reliable way to avoid last-minute paperwork hurdles amid the peak-season rush.
For corporate mobility managers the schedule offers more flexibility for expatriate returns and last-minute business trips, but also highlights potential congestion: Beijing Capital, Guangzhou Baiyun and Shanghai Pudong airports are forecasting peak-day passenger volumes 20-25 per cent higher than last year. China Southern is rolling out ‘instant boarding’ facial-recognition gates at Guangzhou and integrating real-time terminal navigation into its app to ease the crush. Logistics units will run 900 dedicated freighter flights, prioritising fresh produce and festival gift exports.
The aggressive expansion underscores how Chinese carriers are banking on a full recovery in both domestic and outbound demand in 2026, even as global capacity constraints and geopolitical uncertainties linger.
