Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport
Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport is an international airport serving the city of Xiamen in East China's Fujian province. It is the main airline hub for XiamenAir and TAECO, an aircraft maintenance provider. It is located on the north side of Xiamen Island, away from the city's downtown area. It was originally built by Imperial Japan during their occupation of China, and was later converted to exclusive civilian use once the Japanese surrendered World War II. A couple of renovations were made in the early- to mid-1950s under the Communist government, but the airport laid abandoned until after a second renovation in 1955 due to fears of shelling from the nearby Kinmen Island of the Nationalists.
In 1983, the airport re-opened with funding from the Kuwait Fund for further renovations and construction, and over the next decade passenger traffic rapidly increased so that it warranted the construction of Terminal 2 in 1993. In 1996, Terminal 3 was opened. Terminal 1 was demolished in 2012, and at the same time, Terminal 2 became the domestic area for Terminal 3. Construction of Terminal 4 started in October 2011 and was completed in 2014.
In 2024, Gaoqi Airport was listed as the 14th busiest airport in China in terms of cargo traffic, and the 17th busiest in terms of passenger traffic with 27,906,946 passengers, and the 19th busiest airport by traffic movements.
In late 2026, the airport will cease all civilian traffic once Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport is completed and commences operations.
History
Early history
While Imperial Japan occupied Xiamen during World War II in 1941, they constructed the airport east of Gaoqi Village as a military airfield to defend against the U.S. military. It concurrently also served scheduled flights between Xiamen and Taipei, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. After the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the airport was reclaimed by the Nationalist government, who converted it for civilian use. It was now under the management of the Xiamen office of the Civil Aviation Administration. In February of 1949, the management was transferred to the Republic of China Air Force who established the 242nd Supply Squadron to manage the airport. On August 24 that year, the last plane departed the airport carrying high-ranking Nationalist officials en route to Taipei before it shut down due to the People's Liberation Army occupying the area.After the PLA occupied the Mainland, the airport underwent maintenance and expansion to prepare for military operations against Taiwan, which was completed in 1952. In 1955, it underwent a second renovation. However, due to the airport being close to the attack radius of Kinmen Island, the airport never reopened, and henceforth was left abandoned.
Current airport
In 1982, the airport received a loan of the equivalent of 21 million U.S. Dollars from the Kuwait Fund to fund the expansion with the assistance of the then-director of the National Development and Reform Commission Jiang Zemin. The expansion commenced on January of 1982, and the airport was re-opened on October 22, 1983 as the first airport in China to be built with foreign funding and managed by a local government.Once the airport was re-opened, Terminal 1 officially commenced operations with CAAC flight 265 bound for Shanghai being the first flight to take off, to massive fanfare. In April of 1987, after the airport completed a 550 m extension via land reclamation, the total length of the runway became 2,700 m. In October of 1993, Terminal 2 was built and opened to alleviate passenger traffic of Terminal 1. On November 8, 1996, Terminal 3 was opened, becoming the largest and the most state-of-the-art passenger air terminal in China at the time.
On May 5, 2012, the renovated Terminal 2 was re-opened as a section of Terminal 3 to serve domestic flights, with Terminal 1 being demolished and the area being turned into parking space. On December 8, 2014, the airport surpassed the 20 million passenger throughput threshold. On December 28, 2014, Terminal 4 was opened, rendering the airport capable of operating with two terminals.
At 2:00 a.m. local time on December 4, 2017, an Air France A380 became the first of its type to land at Xiamen, with the reason being for maintenance being performed by TAECO.
To prevent the spread of inbound COVID-19 cases from abroad, the second international/Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan arrival area located in the former Terminal 2 commenced operations on October 23, 2021 to manage arriving passengers from the given areas. It has seven sections: the customs epidemiological investigation area, sampling area, disinfection area, symptomatic medical screening area, border inspection hall, baggage claim and inspection area, and logistics office area. It also features an independent partitioned air conditioning system. The border inspection area is divided into two sections: passengers requiring medical attention or transfer are inspected in a dedicated inspection room on the second floor; normal passengers complete entry procedures in the inspection hall on the first floor. The waiting and inspection halls cover approximately 700 m2 and has 12 manual inspection areas and one staff-only inspection area, all equipped with intelligent verification desks, translation machines, and intelligent gate systems. At 6:00 a.m. on January 8, 2023, the arrival area ceased operations. Simultaneously, the international/Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan arrival area at Terminal 3 resumed operations, and all flights and passengers from the given areas proceed there for immigration and customs.