China Southern orders ten more A330-300s

Beijing Daxing Int'l Airport has opened to commercial passenger traffic with its inaugural revenue service - China Southern Airlines flight CZ3001 Beijing Daxing-Guangzhou - having taken off at 1620L on Wednesday, September 25.

The sprawling new aerodrome will compliment the more centrally located Beijing Capital Airport and provide for additional growth in China's aviation market which is expected to become the world's largest domestic aviation market in terms of new passengers in the next three to six years, IATA predicts.

Daxing currently features four concrete runways, ranging in length between 3,400 and 3,800 metres, and will be capable of handling 75 million passengers per annum by 2025. Thus far, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Juneyao Air, Capital Airlines (China), Hebei Airlines, Donghai Airlines, Spring Airlines, China Postal Airlines, and Okay Airways have already signalled plans to open bases at Daxing.

International airlines planning to serve Daxing include British Airways (BA, London Heathrow), Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa), Himalaya Airlines...

American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth) saw the value of its investment in China Southern Airlines (CZ, Guangzhou) substantially decrease by the second quarter of 2019, Gary Leff has said in his travel business blog View from the Wing citing an internal communication.

The airline reportedly told its employees: “Non-operating special items principally included USD52 million of mark-to-market net unrealised losses primarily associated with the company’s equity investment in China Southern Airlines.”

USD52 million would equate to 26% of the original sum of USD200 million that the carrier invested in China Southern only two years earlier, in March 2017. That purchase represented 2.68% of China Southern's enlarged share capital.

The deal was designed to give the two airlines improved mutual access to the world’s two largest travel markets. It made American the second US carrier to own part of a Chinese airline after Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) bought a 3.55% stake in China Eastern Airlines (MU, Shanghai Hongqiao) in 2015 for USD450 million.

ch-aviation reached out...