Construction work has begun on Mount Wutai Airport, a military air base conversion that was part of the 12th Five-year Plan (2011-2015), in the city of Xinzhou, Shanxi province, and is expected to be open in 2015. The plans call for one 2,600-meter-long, 45-meter-wide runway, a 217–meter-long, 18-meter wide taxiway, a 13,340-square-meter terminal, an apron with five gates and a 3000-sq-m parking lot, at a cost of at least 900 million yuan ($148.2 million).
The airport is 71 kilometers from Mount Wutai, a scenic spot, and has convenient transportation, thanks to the Taiyuan-Datong highway and highways to Hebei province, Inner Mongolia, and Shaanxi province. It will handle airlines from Shanghai, Kunming (Yunnan province), Sanya (Hainan province), Guangzhou (Guangdong province), Chengdu (Sichuan province), Changsha (Hunan province) and Urumqi (Xinjiang region) and is expected to handle 350,000 passengers annually, as well as 1,570 tons of cargo, and 4,660 take-offs and landings, which will boost Mount Wutai’s tourism and the economy in the northwestern part of Shanxi. Mount Wutai is a famous Buddhist sire and summer resort. In 2009, it was recognized as a "World Heritage Site" by UNESCO.
Edited by Roger Bradshaw
