China aims to nearly double its number of civil airports by 2035
BEIJING, China - The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) reported that the Asian nation aims to build 216 new airports in the country by 2035. CAAC noted that China currently has 234 civil airports, and plans to have approximately 450 by 2035, according to a report from the state-run China Daily.
The building boom is brought on by a spike in air travel in China, which has around 1.4 billion residents. With wealth growing in urban centers, more Chinese are traveling. CAAC reported Chinese airports had 552 million passengers travel through and estimates that number to swell to 720 million by 2020.
"Service has improved substantially, but existing airports are far from adequate and are unevenly distributed throughout the country," said Dong Faxin, director of CAAC's development and planning department.
CAAC also reported that many of the new airports will be built in the Yangtze River Delta region, in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and in the Chongqing and Chengdu city cluster.
In addition, CAAC claimed that China will surpass the United States as the largest air passenger market in the world by 2035, and Chinese nationals will account for one in four airline passengers by the same year, and air travel will account for a third of the total traffic in the country.
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