As of December 2017, there are 229 commercial airports in China.
Around 500 airports of all types and sizes were in operation in 2007, about 400 of which had paved runways and about 100 of which had runways of 3,047 m or shorter. There also were 35 heliports in 2007, an increasingly used type of facility. With the additional airports came a proliferation of airlines.
China has the fastest growing passenger air market of any country in the world (by total passenger numbers) and between 2009 and 2014 the number of passengers increased over 47% from 266,293,020 to 390,878,784. In 2014 China was second only to the United States in total numbers of passengers carried.
History
The Nanyuan Airport first broke ground in Beijing near the end of the Qing Dynasty, and Chinese aviation pioneers Qin Guoyong and Li Ruyan, the principal and chief of the flight school operations established there in 1913 under then-president Yuan Shikai, had established the first airline service with a route between Beijing and Baoding in 1914. The Beijing Nanyuan Airport ceased civil aviation operations in 2019, after 109 years of service.
In 1922, warlord Cao Kun conducted a 3-day trial tour for "Beijing-Han Airlines" using a Handley Page aircraft (likely a HP O/400 bomber modified for passenger use). That March 31, the aircraft hit trees, crashed, and burned, on approach to Beijing-Nanyuan, killing all 14 on board. This was the first airliner crash in China.
In 1939 at Tsing Hua University a cadre of students constructed a wind tunnel with the help of Frank Wattendorf, a graduate of Harvard, MIT and Caltech. It was assigned to Tsing Hua Aeronautical Research Institute under the direction of Y. H. Ku.
Before the Chinese Civil War, there were Republic of China joint ventures with Pan American World Airways and Lufthansa. In 1946 Civil Air Transport (Air America) was founded by General Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer for the relief of RoC. As a result of the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Communist Party took control of mainland China, and only Civil Air Transport moved along with the Kuomintang (KMT)-controlled RoC government to Taiwan.
In 1949 the new government established the aviation authority and operator General Administration of Civil Aviation of China.
With assistance from the Soviet Union, during the 1950s China built airports in major cities or enlarged the existing airports.
The national air carriers of communist countries were the first to obtain landing rights in China. Pakistan's national air carrier was the first of any non-communist countries' national air carrier to do so. Those landing rights were granted in August 1963 when an air travel agreement followed the Sino-Pakistan Agreement.
Until the 1980s, generally only senior Chinese officials, academics, or foreigners could travel by plane. Few tickets were available and these had to be obtained from danwei rather than purchased at airports.
In 1987, China's government separated the airline operations of General Administration of Civil Aviation of China into a number of state-owned enterprises. The regulatory role was retained by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China which is now known as Civil Aviation Administration of China.
In 2004, the turnover of airfreight reached 7.18 billion ton-km, the passenger turnover was 178.2 billion person-km, and the volume of freight traffic 2.767 million tons. China had a total of 1,279 civil flight routes, 1,035 of them domestic routes reaching all large and medium-sized cities, and 244 of them international, connecting China with more than 70 cities overseas.
China's passenger airline industry is dominated by the three state-owned airlines; Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines. There are limited competition from private operators in the commercial passenger market such as Spring Airlines but the state owned operators have the political and financial wherewithal from the central government to lead the market.
China has never allowed smoking on airplanes.
Statistics
Passenger throughput
In 2009, passenger throughputs of all nationwide airports reached 486.063 million, up by 19.8% over the last year; cargo and mail throughputs were 9.456 million tons, up by 7.0%.
