China Southern Airlines: Our largest competitor is not other Chinese airlines, but high speed rail

China Southern Airlines regional director of sales and marketing William Wang, speaking at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Australia Pacific, stated (29-Jul-2026) China Southern Airlines is "the largest carrier not only in China, but also in Asia", adding: "with scale like that, our largest competitor is not other Chinese airlines, but actually high speed rail". Mr Wang noted passengers can travel between Guangzhou and Hong Kong within roughly 90 minutes via high speed rail (HSR) today, while just 10 years ago the same journey via rail took four to five hours. He also noted that many major airports in China, including Beijing Daxing International Airport, are "actually co-located with HSR stations", meaning that passengers can easily and conveniently transit between domestic HSR travel and international flights. Given this, Mr Wang said Chinese airlines like China Southern have concluded that "within the range of 800km… HSR has an absolute advantage over airlines" for domestic travel between major cities, and airlines are willing to let passengers make domestic journeys in this range to major airports by rail, and then "we fly these passengers onward to overseas destinations".