Photo: Courtesy of China Southern Airlines

Chinese airlines are operating more intercontinental cargo flights to meet rising overseas demand, as flight routes to Europe and the US are the busiest. 

China Southern Airlines said it arranged another B777F cargo flight from Shanghai Pudong International Airport to Chicago on Tuesday, taking its total cargo fleet to seven in a bid to ensure supply chain stability.

The carrier has operated six cargo planes from Shanghai to overseas destinations including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and Chicago since May, the company told the Global Times on Wednesday, adding that it transported nearly 60,000 tons of goods from May to August.

China Southern said that the freighter route from Shanghai Pudong to Amsterdam has been increased from seven to eight flights per week, and the freighter route from Shanghai Pudong to Chicago has been increased from seven to 10 flights per week.

In addition, Shandong Airlines said on Wednesday that it received its first 737-800BCF from Boeing in Jinan, East China's Shandong Province, and it will cover more cargo routes from Qingdao to Osaka and Nagoya in Japan. 

Shenzhen airport said on August 25 that it has reopened five international flights to Hanoi, Doha, Leipzig, New York and Bangalore this year, covering 34 cities. Currently, there are about 400 inbound and outbound cargo flights per week at the Shenzhen airport.

Harbin airport commenced its maiden flight from Harbin in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province to Los Angeles on August 22, carrying 41.4 tons of cross-border e-commerce goods. It's the second cargo route for Heilongjiang, after a route from Harbin to Moscow. 

Chinese air cargo transport has gradually entered to a quickened pace of recovery, given the rising demand of the world for Chinese products.  

The Ministry of Transport said on August 25 that cargo volume in July basically recovered to the level of last year, and the operations of Shanghai Pudong International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport returned to normal levels in August. 

China's foreign trade maintained double-digit growth in July at 16.6 percent year-on-year, official data showed, underscoring the resilience of China's giant export machine which also assuaged market fears of a slowdown due to cooling global consumer demand amid high inflation.

China Southern said that the transported goods are primarily electronics for Shanghai, located in the manufacturing center of the Yangtze River Delta, and it is expected that the logistics industry will enter a peak season from September to get ready for Christmas shopping season.

China's civil aviation industry operated 163,000 cargo flights in the first seven months this year, including "passenger-to-cargo" aircraft. Out of the total, there were 117,000 international cargo flights, with a year-on-year increase of 1.8 percent, data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China showed.