Shanghai's Pudong Airport Ranked World's 7th Busiest in Freight and Mail Volume in 2006
By Chen Liying, Shanghai Daily | Jan. 01, 2007
Shanghai Pudong International Airport was the world's seventh-busiest in terms of freight and mail volume in 2006, moving up one spot from the year before as a result of China's strong trade momentum, the Shanghai Airport Authority said on December 31, 2006.
The city's two airports handled a combined 46.01 million air travelers in 2006, an increase of 11.3 percent from the year before, the authority said.
Passenger volume at the bigger airport in Pudong was 26.66 million, and Hongqiao International Airport accommodated 19.35 million travelers.
The two facilities handled 2.53 million tons of cargo in the past year, a jump of 14 percent from 2005.
Freight volume at the Pudong airport was 2.16 million tons while Hongqiao handled 362,500 tons.
"The Pudong airport ranked No. 3 in Asia in terms of freight and mail volume," said Su Weiwei, a Shanghai Airport official.
Express delivery giants United Parcel Service Inc and DHL have signed agreements with Shanghai Airport to build global and north Asia hubs at the Pudong airfield to further boost freight volume.
A total 409,532 flights took off or landed at the two airports in 2006, a year-on-year rise of 9.2 percent.
Daily takeoffs and landings were 635 at the Pudong airport and 487 at Hongqiao.
Sixty-four airlines now operating regular flights to Shanghai, including 48 overseas carriers.
Shanghai has direct links to 169 domestic and international cities.
Shanghai's two airports are operating beyond their design capacity and are undergoing expansion to meet the country's rapidly growing air traffic demand.
The 19.7-billion-yuan (US$2.5 billion) second phase project at Pudong, which includes a second terminal and a third runway, is expected to be completed in 2007 and put into use before the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
The expansion will give the airport the capacity to handle 60 million passengers and 4.2 million tons of cargo in 2008.
Hongqiao airport is expected to have the capacity to handle 30 million passengers and one million tons of cargo when an expansion program is finished at the end of 2009.