Are airports also starting to become saturated?

After subway passenger flows have peaked in multiple regions, are airport quantities also starting to hit saturation?

Recently, the news that a few airports have suspended passenger routes has drawn widespread public attention. First, Ezhou Huahu Airport, Asia's largest cargo airport, was reported to have suspended all its passenger routes. Later, media outlets reported that Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport would implement seasonal flight suspensions.

Although relevant parties immediately clarified that this is not a full suspension of operations, the topic of sustainable operation of small and medium-sized airports has been pushed to the forefront of public discussion overnight.

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According to public information, seasonal flight suspensions at small and medium-sized airports are actually not a new phenomenon.

For example, the *2025 Airport Operation Statistics of Southwest China* released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China Southwest Regional Administration shows that in 2025, Guizhou Bijie Feixiong Airport, Yunnan Ninglang Lugu Lake Airport and Chongqing Fairy Mountain Airport all implemented seasonal flight suspensions, with suspension periods ranging from 4 months to half a year.

In addition, in December 2025, affected by flight schedule adjustments, Qinghai Qilian Airport also suspended flight operations and resumed operations in July this year.

These airports share very prominent common characteristics: all are small and medium-sized regional airports with a small passenger flow base, most of which rely on tourists from scenic spots, and have extremely obvious differentiation between peak and off seasons.

Therefore, from the perspective of operational efficiency, suspending flights in the off season to reduce ineffective investment can be regarded as a market-oriented adjustment choice.

However, the operation status of domestic small and medium-sized airports extended from this phenomenon is indeed worthy of attention.

When talking about airports, most people first think of the top hub airports in megacities and super-large cities.

As of 2025, there are 9 airports across the country with an annual passenger throughput of more than 50 million person-times. Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu even have two large airports of 4E or 4F class. In addition, the Second Guangzhou Airport and Nantong New Airport (the Third Shanghai Airport) are also under construction or about to start construction.

But in terms of quantity, small and medium-sized airports are the main body of China's civil aviation map. According to the 2025 Statistical Bulletin on the Development of the Transport Industry, there were 270 certified civil aviation transport airports across the country at the end of the year, including 266 domestic airports with regular scheduled passenger flights, covering 261 domestic cities (or regions) with regular air routes.

Among them, only 109 airports have an annual passenger throughput of more than 1 million person-times, and only 41 airports have reached 10 million person-times or above. These 41 airports carry more than 80% of the country's total passenger throughput.

In contrast, there are 44 airports with an annual throughput of less than 100,000 person-times, among which 11 airports have an annual throughput of less than 10,000 person-times, and the annual passenger flow of airports such as Shigatse Tingri Airport and Shannan Longzi Airport is even less than 5,000 person-times.

Most of these airports are located in well-known scenic spots, or in border areas with vast territory and scattered population. In fact, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are the two provinces with the largest number of transport airports in China.

In these regions, civil aviation passenger transport is not just an ordinary travel channel, but also undertakes comprehensive functions such as border accessibility, emergency support and public services. In remote areas, the comprehensive cost of airport construction, operation and maintenance is actually significantly lower than that of long-distance high-speed railways.

However, practical operational pressure does exist objectively. According to data from last year, the passenger flow of many regional airports has declined, and some airports have even seen a passenger flow drop of more than 70%, which naturally increases the pressure of operating costs.

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In fact, the overall growth rate of civil aviation passenger flow is slowing down significantly.

For example, in the first three quarters of this year, the total passenger traffic volume of civil aviation reached 593.186 million person-times, with a year-on-year growth of only 2%, compared with a growth rate of 5.2% in the same period last year. For the whole year, the growth rate was 17.9% in 2024, slowed down to 5.5% in 2025, and may continue to decline for the full year of this year. This change is also reflected in the differentiation among airports with an annual throughput of over 10 million person-times.

In the first three quarters of this year, as many as 15 airports with an annual throughput of 10 million person-times recorded negative passenger flow growth, accounting for more than one third of the total. Among them, the passenger flow decline of airports including Changsha Huanghua Airport, Tianjin Binhai Airport, Lanzhou Zhongchuan Airport, Taiyuan Wusu Airport and Wenzhou Longwan Airport all reached or exceeded 5%.

Then what is the reason behind this?

The most prominent factor is the diversion effect brought by the continuous improvement of high-speed railway and expressway networks.

Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport is a typical representative in this regard. In August 2024, the Huanglongjiuzhai Station of the Chengdu-Qinghai Railway was officially put into operation, enabling the fastest 1.5-hour direct high-speed rail trip from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou. In September 2025, the full Jiuzhaigou-Mianyang Expressway was opened to traffic, cutting the self-driving travel time from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou from the original 8 hours to around 4 hours. These are undoubtedly the important background for Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport to launch seasonal flight suspensions.

In addition, in the first three quarters of this year, in the central region where high-speed railways have particularly prominent advantages, the throughput growth rates of six major hub airports including Wuhan Tianhe Airport, Changsha Huanghua Airport and Zhengzhou Xinzheng Airport all recorded negative figures. In contrast, Urumqi Airport recorded a passenger throughput of 24.232 million person-times in the first three quarters, up 7.7% year on year, surpassing Nanjing Lukou Airport and ranking among the top 10 airports across the country.

This means that the northwest gateway airports with large spatial distance and limited high-speed railway coverage have shown stronger operational resilience.

In addition, a large number of "mini regional airports" originally have high dependence on route subsidies. Along with the change of local government's affordability, the subsidy space is limited, and the motivation to expand routes is weakened accordingly, which may further restrict the growth of regional airport passenger flow.

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Nevertheless, the total number of airports is still growing.

In 2025, 7 new airports were added across the country: Lishui Airport, Balikun Dahe Airport, Ganzhou Ruijin Airport, Bozhou Airport, Jiaxing Nanhu Airport, Tongren Dejiang Airport and Bengbu Tenghu Airport.

The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan has also clarified a number of new airport construction and reconstruction projects: complete the construction of Dalian New Airport and Xiamen New Airport; build Guangzhou New Airport and Nantong New Airport; push forward the preliminary work for Chongqing New Airport and Sanya New Airport; implement the reconstruction and expansion projects of hub airports including Shenyang Airport, Changchun Airport, Nanjing Airport, Hangzhou Airport, Wenzhou Airport, Zhengzhou Airport and Chengdu Tianfu Airport; and push forward regional airport projects such as the relocation of Yanji Airport and Yining Airport.

However, compared with the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the number of newly added airports in the 15th Five-Year Plan period has narrowed significantly. Of course, this figure does not include the general airports planned by various local regions. For example, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have all made it clear that they will realize "airport access in every county" by 2035.

But in general, the peak period of large-scale new civil aviation airport construction has passed, and the balance between incremental expansion and sustainable operation of existing stock airports is becoming increasingly important.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Western City Affairs", written by Xibu Jun, and published by 36Kr with authorization.