[photopress:pudong_air_cargo.jpg,full,alignright]Shanghai Pudong International Airport is now the world’s sixth largest airport in terms of cargo traffic. Thus it moved from position eight to six in one year. This according to the list issued by the Airports Council International.
In 2006 the airport loaded 2,159,321 tons of freight and mail which is 6.3% more than the year before.
Su Weiwei, a Shanghai Airport official, said, ‘The Pudong airport ranked No. 3 in Asia in terms of freight and mail volume.’ Almost 90% of the total cargo was flying to or from a foreign country or region, growing by 31.7% from 2005.
Express delivery giants UPS and DHL have signed agreements with Shanghai airport to build global and north Asia hubs at the Pudong airfield which will further boost the freight volume.
An RMB19.7 billion (US$2.5 billion) second phase project at Pudong airport, which includes a second terminal and a third runway, is expected to be completed in 2007 and put into use before the Beijing Olympics in 2008. At which point it will be able to handle 4.2 million tons of cargo and will undoubtedly have moved up the list.
All of this is pretty astounding when you realize the airport only opened on October 1, 1999, replacing Shanghai Hongqiao Airport as Shanghai’s international airport. The long-term plan — long term used in the Chinese sense which means in time for Expo 2010 — calls for a total of three terminals, two satellite halls and five parallel runways.
Access is worth comparing with that of Dulles in the United States which serves, sort of, Washington D.C. There it looks as though the rail connecting the airport to the city will be running in the next decade or so.
Meanwhile, back at Pudong, by 2002 Transrapid had constructed and inaugurated the first operational maglev railway in the world, from the Pudong International Airport to Long Yang Road Metro station. It has a peak speed of 431 km/h and a track length of 30 km. And the airport is now the sixth largest in the world when it comes to air cargo. No one will be when it will be in the top three. Two years seems a fair estimate.
Source: Shanghai Daily and research.