On December 30, a new air route linking China with Africa will open with great fanfare when an Airbus A330 wide-body aircraft takes off from Beijing Capital International Airport for Lagos, Nigeria shortly before midnight.

China Southern Airlines' flight will be China's only direct air link, albeit with a stopover, between the mainland and the African continent. Another domestic airline previously operated an African route but abandoned it.

"This year has set many milestones for the deepening and maturity of the Sino-African relationship," said Liu Shaoyong, China Southern general manager. "China Southern's decision to launch the air route at this particular moment takes advantage of the historic opportunity in both political and economic terms."

China Southern's flight, coded CZ331, departs from Beijing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and arrives in Lagos after a short stop in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The return flight, coded CZ332, departs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. It takes about 16 hours to fly one-way.

Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria, is the largest city in west Africa. With a population of 14 million, it is the industrial and commercial centre of the country, Liu said.

Furthermore, Nigeria has become China's second-largest trading partner in Africa, after South Africa. "The prospect for trade growth is huge," said Liu, who joined China Southern in 2004 after working as the deputy director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), the government body that oversees the airline industry, and as general manager of China Eastern.

Liu said that in October the two countries signed an agreement to build a US$8.3 billion, 1,315-kilometre railway in Nigeria, for which China will dispatch about 5,000 workers, including engineers. He called Dubai the "ideal transit" point between Asia and Africa because "we already have flights there from Beijing and Guangzhou."

Direct flights will not only save time and bring convenience to travellers going to and from Africa, but also offer a "price advantage," Liu said.

A one-way ticket is priced at 16,000 yuan (US$2,051) for business class and 6,400-9,600 yuan (US$821-1,231) for economy class. If a passenger uses China Southern for connecting flights inside China, or uses Nigeria Airways to connect to other African cities or London, there will be a further discount, he said.

Li Lei, an analyst for CITIC China Securities, said the route may not make money in the near future, but it is significant for exploring and growing the market.

China Southern, with a fleet of 300 large and medium-sized aircraft, is China's largest airline in terms of fleet size, passenger traffic and the density of its service network. "In terms of traffic, in 2005 we were ranked No 9 globally, the only Chinese airline to make it into the top 10," said Yang Defeng, deputy director of the airline's Party Committee Affairs Department.

"To understand how many people we served last year, it was as if we moved the combined population of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou at once," he said.

Although China Southern has always been seen as a Guangzhou-based airline, "it may come as a surprise to you, but we have 21 per cent of the Beijing market," Yang said.

"Our goal is to make Beijing our second hub, in addition to the primary hub of Guangzhou."

As Yang noted, 80 per cent of China's international travellers fly out of Beijing. As for the much coveted segment of business travellers, the daily traffic from Beijing to Shanghai averages around 8,000, and the daily volume from Beijing to Guangzhou averages 3,000. "We are aiming at the Beijing market to better serve our target customers," Yang said.

It is also the reason the flight to Africa originates from Beijing instead of Guangzhou. The airline now has 10 international and 29 domestic flights out of Beijing.

In the first nine months of this year, it served 6.5 million passengers with 50,000 flights. The annual revenue is expected to top 4.3 billion yuan (US$550 million), accounting for 10 per cent of the company's total. "Our goal is to reach 10 billion yuan (US$1.28 billion) by 2008," Yang said.

In early November, a 1 billion yuan (US$128 million) project was completed in the airport development zone, including an office building for the hub operation, that China Southern expects will catapult it into the major leagues of Beijing-based airlines in infrastructure.

In the next five years, China Southern will "build its Beijing hub into a stronghold, where we can not only consolidate our domestic network, but also further expand our international presence, especially those markets that can be served by Airbus 380 wide-body aircraft," Liu said.

Liu, 48, joined the airline industry in 1978. Graduating from the Aviation Flight University of China, he started by flying crop dusters. In the 1990s, he moved up the corporate ladder inside China General Airlines and the Shanxi branch of the CAAC and then China Eastern. Today he is both general manager and chairman of the holding company.

As early as 1996, Liu put forward the notion of "people first," which sounded out of place at a time when the speed of growth was paramount.

China Southern has been through some tough times. In the fiscal 2005, the company, listed in Hong Kong, New York and Shanghai, suffered 1.8 billion yuan (US$230 million) in losses.

And for the first half of this year, it was again in the red to the tune of 835 million yuan (US$107 million). Analysts attribute the financial performance to escalating fuel costs and a scandal involving 4.3 billion yuan (US$551 million).

But the drop in fuel prices and improved management have combined to turn around this behemoth of 55,000 employees. In the third quarter of this year, it showed a huge profit, said Li Lei, a securities analyst, and for the whole year it will "aggregate a slim profit. The prospect for 2007 is even better."

The company says that's the result of Liu's steadfast efforts in cost reduction and service improvement. "We have shifted from making it big to making it better," he said.

One of his catch phrases is "Build fewer buildings and build more (information) systems." Unlike some companies whose parent firms like to live large, China Southern puts its group headquarters and the holding company into one building. It will soon move them into two renovated buildings that were once used for storage.