China sanctions massive airport building programme

BEIJIING – The Chinese government has launched an ambitious plan to build 97 regional airports by 2020 at an estimated cost of US$62.5bn in an attempt to meet soaring domestic passenger and cargo demand.

London’s Financial Times says the cabinet has approved the plan in recent days, stipulating that 45 of the new airports are to be finished by the end of 2010.

By the end of 2006, China had 147 civilian airports.

The FT said a decade of rapid economic growth has created serious bottlenecks in aviation infrastructure, forcing the government to embark on a substantial building programme.

But analysts said chronic congestion will linger even with the addition of new airports, because of shortages in skilled personnel.

Elizabeth Bosher, Asia-Pacific managing director at Landrum & Brown, which provides consulting services to Chinese airports, said, “You can build the airports and buy the planes but you still need the people to maintain and repair them.

“There is so much expansion going on across the country that training will be top priority for at least the next 10 years.”

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the objective was for 82 percent of the country’s 1.3bn people to live within 100km or 90 minutes’ drive from an airport, up from the current 61 per cent.

That growth in passenger demand would raise the number of airports servicing more than 30m passengers a year from three to 13 by 2020, according to official figures.

As the FT pointed out, the US, with less than a quarter of China’s population but a much higher gross domestic product per capita, had 3,364 airports by the end of 2005, according to the Airports Council International.

A second international airport is being planned in Beijing to ease traffic pressure. a

The Beijing Capital International Airport, the only international airport in the host city of the upcoming Olympics, will have no further significant expansions, said Yang Guoqing, deputy head of CAAC.

Yang told a press conference that a new airport was necessary for Beijing and that the CAAC had submitted a report to the central government on site selection.

The airport, China’s busiest, handled 50 million passengers between January 1 and early December, putting it among the world’s 10 busiest airports.