In respond to the recently-proposed plan of regional integration of Yangtze River Delta, cities in Yangtze River Delta will work together to build a cosmopolitan airport complex. To enhance competitiveness of the airport complex, how will Jiangsu Province collaborate with its neighbors, namely, Shanghai, Anhui, Zhejiang and so on to adopt synergetic development with benign competition, complementing each other's advantages?

Rising Need of Aviation Transportation

In Terminal 2, Nanjing Lukou International Airport, Wang Jie and his family, coming from Huai'an, Jiangsu Province were waiting for the flight to Frankfort on July 25 with a heart full of anticipation for the journey in Europe. It is a sign of the summer holiday rush peak approaching the end of July. According to staff in Nanjing Lukou International Airport, all the airlines have been adding up capacity. Apart from popular domestic tourists' spots, there are also large volume of outbound travelers going to overseas scenic sports. For now, Nanjing Lukou International Airport has opened 260 air routes, both domestic and international, with 185 thousand trips, both departure and arrival in the early half of this year, up 20.9% year on year. 

At present, Jiangsu Province is in the first place in terms of airport density, spotted with 9 airports in total. With 145 destinations in the province, its airline network reaches cities all around China and five continents. The airports' annual capacity in the area is 66.3 million trips and 1.57 million tonnes of cargoes. All the airports in Jiangsu are open to the public. From the introduction of the personnel from the Civil Aviation Division of Department of Transportation in Jiangsu Province, there were 223 thousand flights, up 12% year on year, with 28.08 million trips, up 13.6% year on year and 292 thousand tonnes of cargoes, up 5.4% year on year, in the first half of this year.

There are 79 airlines operating scheduled flights and charters in Jiangsu Province. In a bit to develop civil aviation industry in the whole province in a more efficient and comprehensive way, the local airline planned and promoted by the province is about to open.

However, compared with the increasing need in the market, there is still a long way to go for Jiangsu Airlines. "Although there are several direct flights from Nanjing to cities in Europe and America, the limited frequency is not attractive enough for passengers, let alone no air routes to the world's other big cities, like London and Paris." Peng Jia, a sell person in export, living in Nanjing, said to the reporter: "It is arduous and miserable to travel intercontinentally through Shanghai to Nanjing. The most torturing thing is the indirect return trip with over 30 hours. I was taking a giant suitcase with a pack bag and must travel from Pudong International Airport via Hongqiao Railway Station to Nanjing South Railway Station by train." Likewise, Sun Jingpei, studying in Atlanta, USA, does fell the same way. "I need to transit in Los Angeles from Nanjing to Atlanta with lower cost performance than from Shanghai. It would be better to travel from Nanjing with more flights and less money."

Synergetic Development to Change the Weakness in Civil Aviation

Within the context of regional integration of Yangtze River Delta, it is urgent to supplement the shortage in the civil aviation development in Jiangsu Province, in a joint effort to facilitate the establishment of modern comprehensive transportation system.

The Yangtze River Delta consists of 26 cities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui Provinces and Shanghai, boasting a population of some 150 million people and 23 airports. Predicted by the transportation department, the total air traffic volume of Yangtze River Delta will reach 300 million trips in the future. With such scales of population, area and economy in Shanghai and its adjacent cities, the current airport layout is far from enough for the future market needs. With an unclear hierarchy of airport systems and division of labor, it is essential to have an overall planning and systematic layout.

In the outline on the regional integration development of Yangtze River Delta, the government explicitly proposes the synergetic development plan for the civil aviation industry in the region. In addition to set up a new airport in Nantong as a significant part of Shanghai International Airport Hub, the plan includes the improvement of the regional air hub functions of Hangzhou, Nanjing and Hefei, the three provincial capitals in the area to support the construction of Wuxi Shuofang International Airport as another regional hub airport, as well as the acceleration of building an air freight transport hub in Huai'an.

"We will stick to the integration and fully exert the features and advantages of the province to spare no efforts in the construction of urban airport system, airport complex by the railway and facilitated clearance in customs, joining with our neighbors to forge a world-class airport complex", said Lu Yongquan, Head of Jiangsu Transportation Department. To begin with, speed up Nanjing urban airport system construction with the advantages of East Airport Group. Centering on Lukou International Airport with Changzhou Benniu International Airport and Yangzhou Taizhou International Airport, reinforce the synergetic development with Anhui Wuxuan Airport and Chuzhou Airport, in a bit to enhance the international transportation capacity of Lukou International Airport and its connectivity with the world's main air hubs, expanding key air nodes alongside "The Belt and Road Initiative" and further elevating Nanjing's primacy ratio.

By the year of 2030, the target ratio of international travelers in Lukou International Airport will have been 20% to 25%. According to Qian Kaifa, Chief of East Airport Group, synergetic development of civil aviation market in Yangtze River Delta should focus on the core of "Development". At present, different from some giant airports with saturated capacity, the international airport in Nanjing possesses the quality for much higher turnover of transportation, equipped with two long-distance runways in the near future and the capacity of 120 million trips after the expansion far date. Therefore, much expectation is put on the airport for the development of Yangtze River Delta. Also, tight bonding will be fostered between the airport hub and nearby metropolitan areas via the amplification of airport collecting and distributing functions and the evolution of airport-related industry and economy, to give full play of the aggregation and radiation of the core economic factors and resources in a larger scale.

When it comes to blending in the metropolitan airport system in Shanghai, insiders of the industry indicated that Sunan Shuofang International Airport should be stronger, Nantong Xingdong International Airport bigger and Suzhou need set up an airport.

It is acknowledged that Jiangsu government submitted the relocation report of Nantong Xingdong International Airport to Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) earlier this year. Fast and convenient ground transportation system will be established sooner after the permission from CAAC, especially railway network, such as North Riverside High-Speed Railway and Shanghai-Nantong Intercity Railway that link up the new site of the airport. 

As for the expedited building of the air freight transport hub in Huai'an, which will match the criteria of a specialized cargo airport, it will make full use of the edges of the city's ground transportation location to plan and construct an efficient and feasible cargo collection and distribution system and customs environment. An express logistics-oriented air cargo transport hub focusing on E-commence and cargoes will soon step into the stage.

The maiden flight of the scheduled freight route from Huai'an to Xi'an made a successful debut early in July, which makes it possible to transit from Xi'an to America, Europe and Chinese Taipei and so on. Huai'an Lianshui Airport has planned to open 2-3 all-cargo routes to boost on the international cargo business.

Expediting Construction of Airport Complex Alongside Railway Track 

The integrated development of air traffic industry in the Yangtze River Delta aims at enlarging the airports service sphere to satisfy the transportation needs of cargoes and passengers via coordinating comprehensive transportation system. Right now, the large transportation hubs like the airports in Pudong and Nanjing, are still short of intercity railways. Without enough efficient railway connections, the airport complex and urban aggregations can not interact with rapid, highly-frequent and large-capacity ground channels.

Cooperated with the neighbors in Yangtze River Delta, Jiangsu intends to build smooth, efficient and smart comprehensive airport transport system along the railway tracks. Quoting some personnel in the Department of Transport, it will focus on setting up regional rapid access system in the peripheral area that radiates all the Yangtze River Delta, shaping a 2-hour travel circle around the core cities in the region, and a 1-hour travel circle around the main hub which only takes half an hour to reach the downtown city. In addition, a smooth system will be built to make sure it only takes 10 minutes for a motor vehicle to drive in the highway and local trunk road and 15 minutes in the national or provincial trunk highway. For citizens, it will merely cost 5 minutes to reach a bus station. Moreover, it will forge an integrated transit system in the airport core areas to realize convenient and secure collection and distribution which ensures a 10-minute railway or subway to terminal transit.

In order to provide better service with airports along the railway track and connect with surrounding cities, Mr. Lu expressed that the government will promote several highway projects, including the route from Zhenjiang, Jiangsu to Xuancheng, Anhui and so on, to elevate the service radiation level of Nanjing Lukou International Airport, along with the construction of S11 subway in time, finally making the airport a Three-Dimensional comprehensive transport hub with the service of air traffic, bullet trains, subways and highways.

As for the regional service function of Sunan Shuofang International Airport, the government will facilitate the construction of express ways connecting Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou, also a bunch of intercity transports such as Sunan Shuofang International Airport to Changshu, Suzhou, Dianshanhu and Shanghai and so on, reinforcing the airport's connectivity step by step.

Speaking of the new airport in Nantong and the transport between the airport and Shanghai, the government will expedite the implementation of North Riverside High-Speed Railways with an overall plan of construction of Shanghai-Nantong Intercity Track Transport, strengthening the comprehensive transport system's connectivity between Shanghai Pudong and Hongqiao Airports and the new airport in Nantong, with the ground railway transport as its backbone. In the meanwhile, rail transports in Xuzhou, Huai'an, Lianyungang and Yangzhou are under programming which will build up the connection between the airports and the urban areas, forming a rail transport connecting and distributing network that covers and links all the airports, municipal cities and surrounding areas in the region.

It is also necessary to ensure a good job done for synergetic development of the regional civil aviation system engineering when opening up the ground rail transportation. Multiple experts suggested to the writer, each airport should evaluate synergetic development from a nationally strategic perspective, think beyond their positions, make a whole blueprint of the airports' function and fully exert their edges with differentiated development, guiding airports to construct air route networks that fit in their own levels of functions and development, with a coordinated airline network layout. What's more important, the inadequate air space resources that have been constraining the development of civil aviation in the region remain to be resolved, which requires a joint effort to optimize the air space resources in Yangtze River Delta.