Zhangye Ganzhou Airport’s Maiden Flight is a Success

In September, after an A320 from China Eastern Airlines flew for more than an hour, it landed smoothly at Zhangye Ganzhou Airport, which is an airport designated for both military and civilian use. The success of this maiden flight indicated that most preparations had been completed for formal operations. The expansion project of the Zhangye Ganzhou Airport got confirmed by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China in 2009 and was started on May 11th, 2010. The Zhangye Ganzhou Airport was built upon the military airport used by the Air Force of the CPLA’s Zhangye Aviation Academy and 313.4 million RMB was jointly invested by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, Gansu Airport Group Company Limited and Zhangye People’s Government to expand it. The airport is designed to accommodate a passenger throughput of 243 thousand and a cargo throughput of 1,723 tons by 2020. The flight area level is designed as 4C and can undertake the landing and takeoff of aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320. The expansion project of the Zhangye Ganzhou Airport passed its preliminary acceptance inspection on August 15th, 2011 and on August 27th, it passed its flight inspection smoothly. In the Gansu province, the Tianshui Airport is the first established airport for both military and civilian use and Zhangye Ganzhou Airport is now the second one. The establishment of the Zhangye Ganzhou Airport is a success in the attempts of civil-military inoculation, which breaks the bottleneck of the east-west traffic path - which had existed since ancient times - of the Zhangye city, and sets up the air channel for the people of the Zhangye city to go from coast to coast. The success of the airport’s flight test marks that the west part of the Gansu province’s airport establishment has been entirely accomplished and the integrated transport system of the Gansu province will be further perfected.