Western China will have additional 37 airports during the 11th Five-year Plan period (2006-2010), of which six are relocated, and 31 others rebuilt or extended. The overall airport reconstruction project in the western China region will cost 52 billion yuan (6.5 billion US dollars), including an input of 9.6 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars) and the sum is higher than the input for the same use in east China, according to media reports from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC).

At present, the western region has a total of 54 civil-use airports, or 38% of the total number of airports in China. And the airport density in northwest area, nevertheless, is merely one fifth of that in eastern China. With a rapid economic growth, the vast western region has a growing demand for increased civil aviation. Especially in those outlying areas, airport construction outweighs that of rail routes.

Last year, the CAAC and western provinces and autonomous regions agreed upon a blueprint for "airport construction" during the 11th Five-year Plan Period. The Ali region of Tibet is expected to complete the highest airport on earth by October 1 of 2010 despite the wicked weathers and bad conditions with paths in the locality, which are only accessible for five month from May to October every year. Moreover, Sanjiangyuan (the source of China's three leading rivers) airport will be built in Yushu prefecture of Northwest China's Qianghai Province 4000 meters above the sea level, and it will help cut the air-trip from Yushu to Xining, provincial capital of Qinghai province to less than an hour. Moreover, Inner Mongolia will also have 12 civil-use airports by 2010, with branch airfields scattering from its eastern pastures to the fringes of its western wilderness. And Xinjiang will have 20 airports at the end of the 11th Five-year Plan period.

It has been learned that CAAC will subsidized some flights flying to small-scale western airports in a given period of time. Last December, the Northwest Administrative Bureau of CAAC jointed local governments in raising a fund of over 10 million yuan (1.2 billion dillars) to subsidize those airline companies flying the extension air routes.

In view of a 90%-plus loss rate those airports with a turnover of less than one million passengers throughput, CAAC will continue to implement the policy of giving operating subsidies to the western small-scale airports.

By People's Daily Online