Shenzhen plans three new airports with international flights to city expected to double by 2020
The plan aims to make the city southern China’s transport hub but risks bringing more underutilised airports into the Pearl River Delta
Shenzhen is looking to build three new airports – one each for commercial airliners, seaplanes and helicopters – as part of plans to make it southern China’s transport hub.
However, the plan risks bringing even more underutilised airports into the Pearl River Delta.
The airports are part of a 1.4-trillion-yuan (HK$1.66 trillion) blueprint to shift the city’s development eastward. “Shenzhen will build the ‘One Belt, One Road’ transportation hub in southern China and study the plausibility of building an airport on water in the east as well as starting to plan a second airport in the east as soon as possible,” the Shenzhen government’s Eastward Shift Strategic Action Plan for 2016 to 2020 unveiled last month stated.
According to people with knowledge of the plan, a second Shenzhen airport was in the very early planning stages. The work was being carried out based on projected future demand when Shenzhen’s Baoan international airport reached full capacity. The airport – which handled 39.7 million passengers last year compared with 68.4 million in Hong Kong and 50 million in Guangzhou – is starting a 11.2-billion-yuan expansion plan to add a third runway and fourth terminal that could meet demand up to 2045.
A second airport may be built somewhere near Huizhou, a city to the east of Shenzhen, which now has a small facility that is mostly used by the military.
