China Southern's A380 operation is still struggling as most remain restricted to domestic routes

This is the second part of a report looking at China Southern's A380 operation. While the carrier waits for all interested parties to sign off on its Beijing-Paris joint operation with rival Air China, it still has three A380s currently on domestic routes for which it needs to find suitable long-haul services.

In addition to a daily Guangzhou-Los Angeles return service that commenced in Oct-2012, China Southern has double daily Guangzhou-Beijing and daily Guangzhou-Shanghai Pudong services. China Southern has scale in those markets, unlike its brief A380 service between Hong Kong and Beijing, where losses ultimately saw China Southern replace the daily A380 with a daily A321 flight.

Long-haul routes to Frankfurt and New York would be most viable for China Southern's A380, but would probably require cooperation with Air China if to be served out of the preferred hub of Beijing. China Southern has casually floated the idea of A380 services to London and Sydney, but deployment there would face spool-up challenges.