HAIKOU, February 27. /TASS/. South Chinese Hainan Province opened on Thursday a new — second — air route due to the rapidly growing demand in the region, according to www.hinews.cn.
According to the news outlet, the only airway G221 will now have a parallel analogue - the W222 airway, which will facilitate the delivery of cargo and passengers to key Hainan airports - Meilan in the northern part of the province (Haikou city), Phoenix (Sanya) in the south and Boao in the east. The new air corridor is 294 km long. Thanks to this airway, the region, which receives more than 300 aircraft daily, will be able to completely avoid intersecting flights.
As the regional air traffic control regulator noted, this measure will significantly increase the safety of Hainan's airspace. What is more, local logistics projects will be cultivated more efficiently during the implementation of a comprehensive program to establish a free trade zone and port in the province.
According to official figures, the number of flights operated by the Haikou airport is increasing by 10% annually, in Sanya this trend averages 6%. As Meilan and Phoenix airports' infrastructure expands, it becomes more and more difficult for local dispatch services to regulate domestic and international passenger traffic.
Since November 2018, Hainan also controls the airspace of the large port city of Zhanjiang in neighboring Guangdong Province. This also significantly complicated the organization of air routes. The new route is assumed to create additional opportunities for turning the island into a key transport hub of East and Southeast Asia.