China Southern Airlines plans to launch nonstop service between Beijing Daxing International Airport (PKX) and Helsinki, marking the airport’s first direct route to Northern Europe as Chinese carriers continue to expand their European networks.
The airline is expected to begin flying between Daxing and the Finnish capital “soon,” according to PKX, although a start date and planned frequencies have not been disclosed.
The new route would give Daxing its first nonstop link to the Nordic region and comes as Chinese airlines accelerate growth on Europe-bound services while many European carriers remain constrained by longer routings around closed Russian airspace. Excluding Russia, China Southern already operates 20 routes to Europe, including service to Amsterdam, Budapest, Frankfurt, London Gatwick, London Heathrow, Paris and Madrid.
For Helsinki, Beijing would become the third Chinese city served nonstop. In addition to Finnair’s 2X-weekly service to Shanghai, Juneyao Airlines operates four flights per week between Shanghai and Helsinki and a weekly service from Zhengzhou, according to OAG Schedules Analyser.
The planned launch reflects a broader shift in Europe-China aviation following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The closure of Russian airspace to most Western airlines has forced European carriers to operate longer, more costly routings to Asia, while Chinese airlines have retained access to more direct flight paths.
Helsinki has historically positioned itself as a gateway between Europe and Asia, anchored by Finnair’s short polar routings over Russia. That advantage has since eroded. Before the pandemic, Finnair operated five routes to mainland China, including services to both Beijing Capital and Daxing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. Today, its China network is limited to 2X-weekly Airbus A350 flights to Shanghai.
As a result, Finnair’s two-way weekly seat capacity to and from China has fallen from nearly 13,000 in early 2020 to about 1,300, representing roughly 0.3% of total Europe-China capacity, down from about 3.6% before the pandemic.
By contrast, Chinese airlines have rapidly rebuilt and expanded their European networks over the past two years. In 2025 alone, new routes included Sichuan Airlines’ Chengdu-Madrid service, multiple China Eastern additions from Shanghai to cities such as Milan, Geneva, Copenhagen and Barcelona, and Air China’s Chengdu-Paris launch.
Chinese carriers now control about 83% of Europe-China capacity excluding Russia, up from roughly two-thirds in summer 2019.
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