Text丨 Western Jun
After the high-speed rail, airports are becoming the new favorite.
A few days ago, after the new airport in Chongqing was made clear not long ago to "strive for early completion and operation", another airport in the Sichuan-Chongqing area was approved.
According to Shudao Investment Group, the Sichuan Guang'an Civil Airport project was approved.
This marks that among the 21 cities in Sichuan, there will be one more city that has opened a civil airport, and it is also another landmark moment for the construction of Sichuan civil airport after the opening of Langzhong Airport this year.
As the largest inland province, Sichuan, a new round of airport construction has just begun.
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In fact, Guang'an Airport can be said to be a certainty long ago.
As early as 2020, the "Outline of the Construction Plan for the Chengdu-Chongqing Twin-City Economic Circle" included the construction of Guang'an Airport.
In the following year, the Civil Aviation Administration of China approved Pu'an Field as the recommended site for Guang'an Airport.
The approval of this project means that Guang'an Airport has officially obtained the qualification of "prospective student".
According to the plan, the investment of Guang'an Airport is estimated to be about 2.168 billion yuan. It is estimated that in 2030, the passenger throughput will be 800,000 person-times and 1,700 tons of cargo and mail throughput, and in 2050, the passenger throughput will be 3.8 million person-times and 9,000 tons of cargo and mail throughput.
It can be seen that this volume is not the same as the 4F airport in the general first- and second-tier cities. Because it has a grade of only "4C", it belongs to the domestic regional airport.
However, after completion, it means that Guang'an can directly navigate to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other major cities in China, which is very important for increasing the connection efficiency between Guang'an and domestic central cities, facilitating people's travel, and improving the comprehensive energy level of the city.
In fact, in recent years, many ordinary prefecture-level cities in China have begun to build regional airports, which can be said to be another transportation infrastructure project that has attracted much attention after high-speed rail.
After all, having an airport has direct benefits for attracting investment and developing tourism, commerce, information, logistics, etc.
Even, a professor has made statistics that the average pull ratio of airports across the country to local GDP is 1:8, that is, spending 1 yuan at the airport has brought an increase of 8 yuan to GDP.
However, the approval of Guang'an Airport has attracted unusual attention.
On the one hand, Guang'an has a permanent population of just over 3 million, GDP1500 billion, both in terms of economy and population size, it seems "pocket-sized". Moreover, Guang'an is not a typical tourist city.
Then, if such a city can build an airport, it is naturally easy to attract more interpretation and attention.
On the other hand, Guang'an also has a feature, that is, it is included in the Chongqing metropolitan area, and it is also the closest city in Sichuan Province to the main urban area of Chongqing, not far from Chongqing Jiangbei Airport itself, and at the same time close to the airport of Nanchong, another city in the province.
Therefore, in the eyes of many people, why should such a "small town" surrounded by multiple airports build its own airport?
I have to say that Guang'an, as the "hometown of great men", still shows its particularity.
From the perspective of site selection, the airport is located in Pu'an Town, Yuechi County, Guang'an City, and it is an hour's drive to Chongqing Jiangbei Airport. The construction of an airport in Guang'an will mean that more Guang'an people will not need to travel to Chongqing to take flights.
Coincidentally, among the five cities in eastern Sichuan that are closest to Chongqing, Nanchong, Dazhou, and Bazhong all have airports. In addition to the approval of Guang'an Airport, the Suining Civil Airport project is also accelerating the preliminary work of project construction.
In other words, in the future, the five cities in eastern Sichuan near Chongqing will all realize the "airport dream".
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In fact, in the construction of the airport, Guang'an is only one of the "lucky ones" in Sichuan in the next few years.
At present, there are 17 civil airports in Sichuan.
According to the "14th Five-Year Plan for Comprehensive Transportation Development of Sichuan Province", by 2025, the number of civil transport airports in Sichuan will reach 22 and 5 new ones will be added.
At that time, among the 21 cities and prefectures in Sichuan, there are only 6 cities without civil airports left in Deyang, Neijiang, Zigong, Ziyang, Meishan and Ya'an.
If you don't count Deyang, Ziyang and Meishan, which are included in the Chengdu metropolitan area, there are actually only three cities without civil airports.
By 2035, Sichuan will have about 28 civil transport airports. From the current point of view, there is an average of one new civil airport every year.
It is worth noting that there are currently four "double airport" cities in Sichuan.
In addition to Chengdu (Shuangliu and Tianfu), there are also Nanchong (Gaoping, Langzhong Ancient City), Aba Prefecture (Hongyuan, Jiuzhai Huanglong), Ganzi Prefecture (Kangding, Daocheng Yading).
By the end of 2021, the number of civil airports in Sichuan ranked third in the country, second only to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
However, the density of airports in Sichuan is not outstanding. It is not only far lower than municipalities such as Tianjin and Chongqing, but also has a significant gap with Guizhou, Shandong, Jiangsu, etc.
Therefore, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the density of airports in Sichuan in the future.
One might say, is it necessary to build so many airports?
A fact to be pointed out here that may be contrary to "common sense" is:
The more complex the terrain and the less densely populated the area, the more airports are needed.
Because the cost of building highways and high-speed railways in these places is actually higher and the utilization efficiency is lower.
At the beginning of this year, Wang Yu, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and chairman of Spring Airlines, put forward a point of view that regional airports are more suitable for the central and western regions than high-speed rail.
He gave an example:
The cost of one kilometer of high-speed rail is about 150 million yuan in the plain, the construction of the central and western regions is difficult and the conditions are poor, and the distance between counties in many areas is hundreds of kilometers, and the construction cost of high-speed rail between cities and even counties is tens of billions of yuan, and the cost of operation and maintenance is extremely high.
The construction of a regional airport generally only costs a few hundred million yuan, and the operation and maintenance costs are much lower, which is "less cost, more work, and high efficiency" compared with high-speed rail.
In fact, if compared with some foreign aviation powers, there is still a big gap in the density of domestic civil aviation airports. Especially in the Midwest.
Therefore, the "National Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline" proposes that by 2035, the national civil transport airports will reach about 400.
In other words, in the next 15 years, China will add more than 150 new airports, an average of 10 new airports per year.
It is worth noting that the "Outline" also puts forward a standard: the future municipal administrative center to the airport in 60 minutes.
In this regard, Sichuan, as a province with a large population and economy, as well as the "most complex" province in China, and a rare economic province with a high-speed rail mileage that has not entered the top ten in the country, will naturally become one of the key areas for airport construction.
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Of course, when we usually talk about airports, we mainly refer to civil transport airports.
In fact, there is another kind of airport, the general airport, which is now becoming the focus of accelerating the layout of various places.
It is mainly dedicated to other flight tasks in addition to personal flight, passenger transportation and cargo transportation, such as official business trips, air tourism, air performances, aerial photography, aerial mapping, agriculture and forestry spraying and other special flight tasks.
Compared with civil transport airports, the approval procedures and management requirements of general airports are more simplified, and the construction threshold and investment amount are relatively lower.
So, it is no exaggeration to say that general-purpose airports are blooming everywhere.
A typical representative is that Hunan approved 55 general airports in one go in July 2022, and proposed to strive to achieve "general airports in counties and townships and temporary take-off and landing points in townships and townships" by 2035.
In this regard, Sichuan also has great potential to be tapped.
At present, there are only 18 general airports in Sichuan, ranking eighth in the country.
According to the "Sichuan Province Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline", by 2035, Sichuan general airports will reach about 80, and the airport system with Chengdu International Aviation Hub as the core, regional airports as the support, and general airports as the supplement will be basically built, so as to achieve 60 kilometers of coverage of the prefecture-level administrative center of the civil transport airport and 80 kilometers of the county-level administrative center (100 kilometers in Sanzhou).
That is to say, in the next ten years, Sichuan will add 6 new general airports every year.
Sichuan's demand for general airports has been mentioned earlier in terms of natural geographical conditions.
In terms of economic and geographical conditions, Sichuan's general airport also has a strong rigid demand.
This year, the low-altitude economy has become a buzzword and is setting the tone at the national level.
But in fact, as early as December 2017, Sichuan was approved to become the first pilot province in the country to carry out low-altitude airspace collaborative management.
At present, the coverage of Sichuan's low-altitude flight network has expanded from Chengdu to the vast area connecting southern and northern Sichuan, and the area of coordinated airspace management has expanded from 6,600 square kilometers to 7,800 square kilometers.
At the same time, Sichuan has a strong aviation industry foundation, and has obvious technology and industrialization capabilities in aircraft complete aircraft, aero engines, aviation supporting products, etc., as well as talent advantages.
Then, in order to develop the development advantages of the low-altitude economy, as an important supporting infrastructure of the low-altitude economy, the general airport naturally needs more popularization.
In addition, Sichuan is home to the world's largest flight training university, the Civil Aviation Flight University of China. The school alone manages and operates a number of general and transport aviation airports, which also provides more "scene" support for the construction of general airports.
According to statistics, one out of every ten pilots in the country is from Sichuan.
In fact, as a national strategic hinterland province, Sichuan has more important considerations in the infrastructure construction of aviation airports. Including the construction of the new airport in Chongqing, there is also no shortage of factors in this regard.
It can be said that Sichuan's vigorous promotion of aviation infrastructure construction is determined by a variety of internal and external factors. The expectations it carries are extraordinary.
From all aspects, Sichuan, which has failed to become a strong province of high-speed rail, must become a strong aviation province.