China Southern Airlines has become the latest airline to join IAG Cargo’s Partner Plus Programme. From August 2015, IAG Cargo customers will benefit from confirmed space booked on China Southern Airlines aircraft to a range of new destinations including Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Urumqi.

In total, six carriers now form the Partner Plus programme including Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, the Avianca group, American Airlines and Finnair.

Steve Gunning, CEO of IAG Cargo, commented: “Our Partner Plus Programme has allowed us to grow our network reach in an asset light way.

Today’s deal will provide our customers with new destinations in some of the Asia’s most important trading hubs. IAG Cargo has its sites firmly set on network expansion and Partner Plus is allowing us to meet this goal much more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.

“With the addition of China Southern, our programme now offers our customers extended network reach across all the world’s key markets. Our focus is now shifting away from adding new members and onto deepening our commercial relationships with the existing members of the programme.”

Zhao Fengsheng, SVP Cargo at China Southern, commented: “IAG Cargo has a strong global network reach and will prove an important partner in helping us to connect our customers with markets in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere.

We look forward to working with them on what we believe will prove a highly effective and beneficial partnership.” IAG Cargo customers can track their shipment from origin to destination via track and trace functionality covering every leg of the journey. Customers can also rely on a recovery guarantee that will ensure that their freight will be recovered within 48hrs in the event of an operational offload.