Last year, three major airports in Shanghai, Beijing and South China's Guangdong Province showed the highest levels of competitiveness among major Chinese airports in terms of factors such as passenger capacity, accessibility, efficiency, value of airlines and matching airport growth to local economic growth, an industry report showed.
The report ranked 37 major Chinese airports that had achieved an annual throughput of over 10 million passengers last year. Among which, Shanghai Pudong Airport (PVG) topped the list with a competitiveness index of 9.54 out of 10, followed by Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (CAN) in Guangdong, with scores of 9.46 and 8.17, respectively.
The average competitiveness index was 6.12, with most airports ranking between 5 and 6, indicating that there is plenty of rooms for further improvement, according to the report.
In terms of the airports' passenger capacity, PEK was the largest, trailed by PVG and CAN. The three airports were also the highest ranked in terms of accessibility. The Beijing airport had an edge in connecting domestic air routes with international air routes, while the Shanghai airport excelled in serving as a transfer point for international airlines.
With regard to earnings from the different air routes, Beijing airport grossed the highest income from ticket sales, followed by Shanghai and Guangzhou, the report said. But the three airports all gave way to Xi'an Xianyang International Airport in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province in the category of airport operational efficiency and flight on-time arrivals.
While the Xi'an airport recorded a flight on-time arrival rate of 92.29 percent last year, the highest among all major Chinese airports, the rate for Shanghai and Beijing airports was only 80.68 percent a76.54 percent, respectively, according to the report.
When determining whether or not airport development is on par with local economic development, airports in Sanya and Haikou in South China's Hainan Province significantly outperformed their regional social-economic levels, whereas airports in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province and Shijiazhuang, capital of North China's Hebei Province, bottomed the list and lagged well behind their local economies.
The release of the report also come at a time when the global aviation industry is grappling with new pressures and industry insiders are exploring ways to improve the competitiveness of airline hubs. In recent months, major Chinese airports have shown negative growth in throughput and air cargo shipped by large-scale global airports slipped.
"The report could provide a comprehensive picture that might help promote the management of airports and foster benign competition," said Zheng Hongfeng, CEO of flight data services company Variflight.com during the release of the report, thepaper.cn reported.
Ten major airports in China showed negative growth in throughput in April, official data showed. Among them, Beijing Capital International Airport experienced the biggest drop in throughput of 5.9 percent year-on-year.
