The additional eleven and a half hour flight will be operated on board a Boeing 787 Dreamliner out of Terminal 4.

Once in Guangzhou travellers will then be able to take advantage of the airline’s SkyTeam membership, giving it access to more than 120 destinations in China, Japan, Korea, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Nick Newman, commercial manager for UK and Ireland, said: “Our mission is to make diverse destinations like China more accessible for UK travellers, so we’re thrilled to be able to add a second daily flight from London to Guangzhou.

“The new flight frequency brings our total weekly departures between Western Europe and China to 41 and firmly signifies our continued expansion.”

The new flight schedule will operate at the following times with the outbound flight departing Heathrow at 12.35pm before landing at 7.10am.

For the return leg, the aircraft will depart Guangzhou at 12.55am before landing in west London at 6.35am.