Airport
Guangzhou Baiyun Airport (CAN)
Baiyun is a connecting airport before it is a destination one. It is the southern hub where long-haul flights from Europe, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia meet a domestic network that reaches the rest of the country, and most people who pass through it never leave the building. That shapes everything about the place: the terminals are organised around transfers, the city sits a metro ride to the south, and twice a year the trade fair turns the arrivals hall into the busiest door in the Pearl River Delta.
Updated 2026-09-22
- CodesCAN · ZGGG
- Passengers per year (2024)76,370,000
- Elevation15 m
- ServesGuangzhou
- Official websitebaiyunairport.com
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Terminals split by alliance
Baiyun's two main terminals, T1 and T2, stand side by side at the northern edge of the city, and the division is by carrier rather than by where the flight is going. T2 belongs to China Southern and the SkyTeam airlines around it; T1 holds the other alliances, the budget fleets and most visiting foreign carriers. Each takes international and domestic flights alike, so the boarding pass decides where you go — a free shuttle links them if it decides wrong.
Inside each terminal the international and domestic halls are kept apart, and moving between them is a formal crossing with documents rather than a walk. That single fact governs connections here: an international arrival continuing on a domestic flight clears immigration and customs, collects its checked bags and starts again at a domestic desk. Domestic to domestic, by contrast, is barely more than a change of gate.
The metro south and the coaches out
Line 3 runs beneath both terminals — the airport is its northern end — and carries you down into the Tianhe business district of Guangzhou without a change. It is the default for anyone travelling with what they can lift, and it is the one option the expressway traffic above it cannot touch. Trains fill quickly at the terminal stations, which is an argument for walking down the platform before the doors open.
Airport coaches leave the arrivals kerb on numbered routes for the districts, the railway stations and the hotel clusters, and with luggage they are the better answer. Taxis are metered and queued at a staffed rank; road tolls appear on top of the meter, which is normal here rather than a warning sign. Offers made to you inside the terminal have nothing to do with that queue.
Arrival, the border and the transfer clock
Foreign arrivals are fingerprinted at kiosks before they reach an officer, and the customs channel past the baggage belts is a genuine check rather than a formality. What a given nationality needs before boarding at all — a visa, a visa-free entry, or a transit stop that never counts as entry — belongs to the rules for China rather than to the airport.
Because so much of the traffic is connecting, the building empties and refills in cycles: long-haul arrivals land into a burst of domestic departures, and the quiet hours between them are short. Give a connection more than the ticket's stated minimum whenever bags have to be reclaimed, and treat the hall's signage for transfer desks as the route rather than following the crowd toward the exit.
Fair season and storm season
Twice a year the airport keeps a different clock. The Canton Fair that fills the city's exhibition halls fills the terminals, the taxi queue and every usable hotel bed with it, and flights price accordingly. Anyone arriving for other reasons in those weeks should book the room before the flight, and expect the coaches and the metro to be the only things moving on schedule.
The other rhythm comes off the sea. Subtropical summers bring heavy afternoon thunderstorms, and the season's typhoons are managed by holding aircraft on the ground rather than flying around them, so delays arrive in blocks rather than one at a time. A morning departure is the dependable one in that season, and a same-day onward connection carries genuine risk.
Onward across the delta
The Pearl River Delta is one travel region with several airports in it, and Baiyun is the northern one. Cross-border coaches run from arrivals to Hong Kong and Macau, and shorter services reach Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan directly, which makes landing here a workable way into the whole megacity cluster rather than one city.
Rail pulls the other way. The high-speed station sits on the far side of the city, so an onward train means crossing town first; what waits at the other end is the same on the national rail network wherever you board — online booking, passport gates, airport-style security. Car hire exists at the airport but rarely repays the trouble: delta expressways, tolls and city plate restrictions ask more of a visitor than the metro does.
Practical: paying, waiting, resting
The airport is where the payment gap shows first. The cash machines in arrivals take foreign cards, but the coach window, the noodle counter and the taxi meter all assume a phone, so a card linked to a local payment app before departure, and a working number on landing, between them remove most of the first hour's friction. The exchange counters here are also the last ones you are likely to see — in the city, cash comes out of machines rather than over a desk.
For a long wait, both terminals keep quiet seating, showers and paid lounges that sell entry for a block of hours, and the food improves markedly once you are past the central concourse. Lockers and a left-luggage counter sit landside. Hotels stand along the approach road with shuttles of their own, which is the sensible plan for an early departure or a connection that has slipped to the following morning.