The city of Shijiazhuang's Zhengding International Airport, in Hebei province, reports handling 83,000 passengers in the first half of this year, for a year-on-year increase of 65.1 percent, and predicts that the volume will set a new record during the summer holiday. Flights to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand have proven very popular and the city's travel agencies say that anyone wanting to sign up for a Taiwan visit at the end of June will have to wait until the end of July.
The city has two air routes to Taiwan, one that began operation in 2010 and Hebei residents have shown a lot of enthusiasm for Taiwan travel and the number of passengers has been increasing annually. The airport says that 43,000 people traveled to Taiwan in the first half, for a year-on-year increase of 34.7 percent. At the same time, more people are visiting the mainland for both investment and sightseeing. A round-trip ticket booked 45 days ahead of time has a special discount price of 2,500 yuan ($407).
Another hot destination is South Korea's Jeju, which has a visa-free policy for Chinese and is attracting many. The flight to Cheju went into operation on July 6 and another opened on July 12. Flights to Seoul and Busan opened at the same time. In the first half of this year, there were 134 fights to South Korea from Shijiazhuang, with 21000 passengers in all and the airport predicts 90 flights in July and August, with more than 15000 passengers.
The Bangkok route re-opened on July 16, with flights using a Boeing 767, a wide-body jet. This is the first time for the airport to use wide-body jet. In the Jan-April period, it handled 5,159 people traveling to Thailand. |
