CAAC Director: no overbuilding of small/medium airports in China
2012 05 30
- Details
ON the recently held China Civil Aviation Development Forum, Director of Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) Li Jiaxiang said there are concerns about losses of small and medium airports in China and questions whether China has built more of these airports than necessary. And he said that this is misunderstanding about the strategic status and function of the aviation industry in China, Xinhua reports.
Mr Li pointed out that it is a common puzzle across the world for small and medium airports to keep making profit, even in developed countries. As of end 2011, China has 180 airports with a total profit of CNY5.3 billion (US$835.4 million). Of these 135 recorded loss, which totalled to CNY2 billion and 119 of them were small and medium ones, taking up 87 per cent of the total.
Mr Li said that small and medium airports' services covers over 70 per cent of the countries in China, making trillions of renminbi's contribution to the local economy, and this is where these airports' function should be judged from, not simply from the losses they are making.
When asked about the CAAC's strategic orientation of each airport in China under the circumstances that airports in mega cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are short in capacity while smaller ones get not enough passenger or cargo feed, Li said there are many structural problems in China' aviation industry, where a mechanism of collaborations between international and regional hubs, major airports and feeder ones have not yet developed.
Mr Li said that government of smaller cities has been appealing for launch of more flights to airports in large cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou during recent years. But capacity shortage of these airports is making these demands hard to meet.
At the meantime, not enough passenger and cargo flow in smaller airports have resulted in less routes launched, making these airports far from able to cater the need of development of the local economy. While the disappointing operating results of these airport is also diminishing the local governments' desire to invest in them.
Mr Li said China is planning to build up a network where passenger and cargo are fed from hub airports to smaller ones to support the development of smaller airports.
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