Ethiopian Airlines (ET) plans to double its flights to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, an Ethiopian official said on Sunday.

ET Managing Director of International Services Esayas Woldemariam told Xinhua that the flag carrier plans to fly to Guangzhou twice a day, up from once every day now.

The airline currently operates one daily passenger flight each from Addis Ababa to Guangzhou and Beijing, and three-times-a-week passenger flights to Chengdu.

It also operates daily passenger and cargo flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

ET was the first African airline to start flight services to China, back in 1973.

"From October 2019, we plan to double our flight frequencies to Guangzhou, to meet the demands of an increasing passenger traffic," Woldemariam said.

The airlines is also planning to add more Chinese destinations to facilitate the rapidly increasing multifaceted ties between African countries and China, he added.

ET plans to start cargo flight services to Zhengzhou and passenger flight services to Dalian and Hangzhou.

"ET has also many other Chinese cities in its network radar, but it all depends on the approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, which has so far been very cooperative to us," Woldemariam said.

Guangzhou, capital city of China's Guangdong province, is home to a large African community.