The world’s second highest airport will open in China in about six months time. Possibly to give intending passengers time to train and get acclimatized.

The airport is in Kangding, a Tibetan highland region of Sichuan province in southwest China at a remarkable altitude of 14,042 feet, and will allow tourists to visit one of the most scenic regions of China. The illustration is of the current road at the same height as the air strip will be.

Flights will begin May 1 and cut travel time from the current five to seven hours by road to about 35 minutes in the air.

The Kangding airport is only surpassed in altitude by the Chamdo Bamda airport in Tibet, which is at 14,219 feet. At both airports, jetliners need extra long runways to take off in the thin air.

The airport was designed to handle 330,000 passengers and 1,980 tons of cargo and mail annually and will start operating in May next year.
Source: China View

The civil aviation regulator said it will soon launch policies to subsidize largely loss-making small and medium-sized airports as well as short-hop air services.

Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) said in a statement on its website that subsidies for airports will be provided mainly to those with annual passenger traffic of less than 5 million people, and those located in remote, underdeveloped regions.

More than 80% of the country’s airports are eligible for the subsidies, with subsidy levels dependent on each airport’s size and location.

Short-hop air routes with passenger load factors lower than 80 per centwill also be subsidized. It did not provide a timetable for the new rules.

The civil aviation regulator added that the state council, China’s cabinet, has approved its proposal to continue an airport construction levy until 2010. Passengers are currently levied RMB50 as airport construction fees for each domestic flight, RMB10 for domestic regional routes and RMB90 for international routes.

The illustration is of Xining airport, Tibet. That is a small airport by any definition.

First of all what is RNP? It stands for Required Navigation Performance which uses GPS (global positioning system) and sophisticated avionics to ensure that aircraft stay on precise, pre-programmed paths. Air China A319s will use this capability to guide its planes through Himalayan mountain valleys when arriving and departing the airport at Lhasa. The illustration shows the runway there and the fact you need all the help you can get.

It has already been used this month making it the world’s first Airbus plane to use RNP in revenue service. Now it is being extended through the Airbus A319 fleet.

Naverus makes the system and has worked with Airbus, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Air China to make this new safety measure work.

In addition to providing navigation solutions for terrain challenged airports, RNP can also be used to increase safety and operational efficiency while minimizing aircraft emissions and noise at any airport.

There is a further benefit which is not widely understood. It is possible, using meteorological information, to plan a flight path to use the minimum of fuel to get from A to B. As the price of fuel rises and as the protests against the so-called greenhouse effect become louder so it will be important for a commercial aircraft to use the least possible amount of fuel. Systems to fly aircraft in this way to some extent have been in use with some airlines for several years. Now RNP takes it to a new level.
Source: Aero-News.net

Shenzhen Airlines now flies from Shenzhen to Lhasa in a bid to get a slice of the booming tourism industry in the Tibet Autonomous Region. With a stopover in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, it will take about five-and-a-half hours to fly from Shenzhen to Lhasa.

Liu Jianping, vice-president of Shenzhen Airlines said, ‘As the first air route to link Tibet and Shenzhen, the new route will greatly promote the exchanges in economy, culture and tourism between Lhasa, Chongqing and Shenzhen.

‘It will also play a positive role for Tibet in attracting outside investment and tourists from the Pearl River Delta areas.’

The carrier will have four flights every week. Tibet’s tourist arrivals are expected to pass three million by the end of this year and double that by 2010 according to a forecast by the tourism authority.
Source: China Daily