China Southern Airlines has introduced the Canton Route to Europe, capitalising on new scheduled services from its Guangzhou hub to London Heathrow in June.

And the airline is starting to target Australians promoting its three European destinations as an alternative to the traditional Kangaroo Route between Australia and London.

China Southern will launch three flights a week between its Canton (Guangzhou) hub and London. It already flies to Paris and Amsterdam, routes it plans to increase frequency on.

Executive VP He Zongkai said he hoped the Canton Route would become as popular as the Kangaroo Route for Australians travelling to London and Europe.

"This June we will launch a new Guangzhou-London air service and increase flight frequencies on our Guangzhou-Paris and Guangzhou-Amsterdam services to make Guangzhou an ideal transfer hub between Australia and Europe," he said.

"I would like to call this air link the Canton Route."

He is leading a high-powered China Southern delegation to the 2012 Sydney Festival, which China Southern has joined as a leading sponsor and official airline. He is to be joined later in the Festival by China Southern's President and CEO, Tan Wangeng.

He told thousands of Sydneysiders attending the popular Summer Sounds in the Domain concert on Saturday night that China Southern saw its support for the Sydney Festival as an important way to strengthen relations with NSW and the rest of Australia.

"Since last year, China Southern Airlines has operated double daily flights between Sydney and Guangzhou," He said.

"We have increased the frequency of our Melbourne-Guangzhou service to double daily, extended our Brisbane-Guangzhou route to Beijing, and launched a new Perth-Guangzhou-Beijing service with three weekly flights.

"China Southern presently operates 35 weekly flights from Australia to Guangzhou ... and we expect that by the end of 2015 we will operate more than 110 weekly round-trip flights from Australia."

China Southern has operated into Australia for more than 10 years. With the largest airline fleet in Asia and carrying more than 80 million passengers in 2011, it is the third largest airline in the world.