Dalian Jinzhouwan International Airport is an

international airport An international airport is an airport with customs and border control facilities enabling passengers to travel between countries. International airports are usually larger than domestic airports, and feature longer runways and have faciliti ...

being built to serve the city of

Dalian Dalian ( ) is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China (after Shenyang ...

Northeast China Northeast China () is a geographical region of China, consisting officially of three provinces Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. The heartland of the region is the Northeast China Plain, the largest plain in China with an area of over . The regi ...

Liaoning ) , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = Clockwise: Mukden Palace in Shenyang, Xinghai Square in Dalian, Dalian coast, Yalu River at Dandong , image_map = Liaoning in China (+all claims hatched).svg , ...

province. Once open, it will replace the existing

Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport is an international airport serving the city of Dalian in Northeast China’s Liaoning province. It is located in Ganjingzi District, about northwest of the city center. In 2018 the airport handled 18 ...

as the city's main airport. It is being built on a of reclaimed land off the coast of Dalian. Expected to be open by 2025, it is set to become the world's largest offshore airport.

Background

Dalian is currently served by

, which has been used for both military and commercial flights since 1924 when Dalian was

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

leased territory In international relations, a concession is a ":wikt:synallagmatic, synallagmatic act by which a State transfers the exercise of rights or functions proper to itself to a foreign private test which, in turn, participates in the performance of pu ...

. As air traffic skyrocketed, the airport was expanded four times, in 1992, 1993, 2005, and 2011, and served more than 13 million passengers in 2012, ranking 15th in China. Due to Dalian's rapid expansion, the airport is now surrounded by built-up urban area and has no more room to grow. As a result, the authorities launched the Jinzhouwan Airport project, which was included in the 12th national five-year plan in 2011.

Construction

The airport project was officially announced in 2012, but construction had already begun in April 2011. It is being built on of reclaimed land in , off the coast of Dalian, and is set to become the world's largest offshore airport. It will become China's first airport built on an artificial island The airport is designed to handle the

Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a very large wide-body airliner, developed and produced by Airbus until 2021. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and the only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the pr ...

, the largest passenger jet, and is projected to cost 26.3 billion yuan (US$4.3 billion) to build. While the airport was originally planned to open in 2018, as of 2020, construction appeared to have been stalled in the land reclamation phase since 2016. In 2014, Chinese media reported that the airport had not received the necessary approval from the national government, even though construction had already begun three years prior to the announcement. Some experts criticized its cost, warning that the cost of constructing and maintaining runways on reclaimed land could be 20 times more than inland airports. The project has officially entered the national review phase in March 2021, and the airport is expected to open to the public in 2026.

Facilities

The airport is being built in two stages. The first stage comprises a terminal building and two runways, and is designed to handle 31 million passengers and 650,000 tons of cargo per year. Two more runways will be built in the second phase (class 4F), and once completed, the airport will have the capacity to handle 70 million passengers a year, as well as 1 million tons of cargo each year.

References

{{authority control Airports in Liaoning Proposed airports in China Transport in Dalian Artificial islands of China Artificial island airports

Background

Construction

Facilities

See also

References