The China Southern Airlines is to launch flights between Beijing and Lagos, the first China-Africa passenger air service by a Chinese air carrier, the company said yesterday.

Using an Airbus 330 airliner, China Southern will link China's capital with the commercial and industrial center of Nigeria in western Africa.

The flights are set to take off at 11:40 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and arrive at 11:10 a.m. (local time) the next day.

Insiders say the new route will meet the needs of growing Sino-African diplomatic and trade ties and facilitate common development of the Chinese and African economies.

The announcement for the new route came just ahead of the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, scheduled on Nov. 4-5.

With a theme of "friendship, peace, cooperation and development", the Beijing Summit will be the largest and highest-level gathering of Chinese and African leaders since the establishment of Sino-African diplomatic relations in the 1950s.

Sino-African trade is estimated to exceed 50 billion U.S. dollars this year, almost five times that of 2000.