China Southern to start Guangzhou–Changsha–Addis Ababa flights on 12 October

China Southern Airlines is due to start flights from Guangzhou to Addis Ababa via Changsha on Monday 12 October, its first scheduled service to Ethiopia. Jiemian News carried the airline's announcement of the route on 20 September.

Flights will run twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, with a Boeing 787 wide-body aircraft, Jiemian reported. Aviation Week reported on 28 July that the aircraft is a 787-9 and that the carrier had confirmed the October launch.

Flight CZ8095 stops at Changsha and departs again at 13:50 Beijing time. It is due in Addis Ababa at 20:00 local time, Hunan Voice, a Hunan news portal, reported on 18 September, as did the travel trade site TTG China on 21 September. The return, CZ8096, leaves Addis Ababa at 23:00 local time, reaches Changsha at 15:10 Beijing time the next day, departs at 17:10 and lands in Guangzhou at 18:45. TTG China gave that journey as 14 hours 45 minutes.

Jiemian described it as the first direct route to Ethiopia from a Chinese airline in South China. Hunan Voice reported on 18 September that it is China Southern's second direct Africa route out of Hunan, after Changsha–Nairobi. Aviation Week said China Southern currently flies to Nairobi from both Guangzhou and Changsha, and that Ethiopian Airlines already flies nonstop between Guangzhou and Addis Ababa.

Addis Ababa is the Ethiopian capital and the seat of the African Union. From its Bole International Airport, passengers can reach 11 African cities within seven hours, according to Hunan Voice and TTG China. The cities named are Harare, Lusaka, Cairo, Lubumbashi, Entebbe, Kigali, Johannesburg, Zanzibar, Lagos, Dar es Salaam and Accra.

On the Chinese side, TTG China said passengers landing in Guangzhou can connect the same day to 40 domestic points, including Beijing Daxing, Shanghai Pudong and Fuzhou. Hunan Voice put the number of same-day domestic connections from Changsha at 22 flights.

Hunan Voice said Changsha is the permanent host of the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo.

Aviation Week, citing OAG schedule data, put China Southern's summer 2026 China–Africa capacity at about 159,000 two-way seats, up 51.5% from about 105,000 a year earlier. That made it the third-largest operator in the market by capacity, the magazine said.