China opens new border airport in southwest

CHINA has opened a civil airport, Tengchong Hump Airport, in Tengchong County in the southwestern Yunnan Province at the border between the country and Myanmar, reports Logistics Week.

Travel time from Kunming to Tengchong was once a 10-hour bus ride, now it is only a 50-minute flight away. The airport has launched three daily flights connecting it with Kunming, and it will also add flights linking the county with other tourist sites in Yunnan, including Lijiang and Xishuang Banna.

The civil airport development cost CNY476 million (US$69 million) and is able to handle 480,000 passengers and 2,100 tonnes of cargo per year. Last year Tengchong received 2.88 million tourists - a number that is expected to grow this year with the opening of the new airport. Tengchong Hump Airport is expected to handle nearly 295,000 passengers this year.

Tengchong Hump Airport is named after the famed route over the Himalayas flown by the American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers) and commercial airliner China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) during World War II.

Source: Schednet