Seoul Incheon International plans to boost inbound tourism by increasing the number of slots come 2020.
Incheon is operating at close to capacity and the operator says that this causes restrictions on new and additional flights.
At current capacity, it can handle 65 operations per hour and plans to increase this to 70 per hour will allow for additional 16,000 flights each year.
Further to that, the airport is offering a $50,000 subsidy on marketing expenses for launching trial flights, and up to W1 billion ($860,000) on strategic routes with high inbound traffic and transit passengers.
To encourage connectivity between Incheon and local airports, Incheon is offering exemptions from landing fees and passenger airport fees, valued at W700 million and W1.2 billion, respectively.
The cargo sector, which was adversely impacted by US-China trade issues, will benefit from reductions in landing and parking fees.
The airport will also be part of a pilot programme linking Incheon with the Port of Weihai in Shandong, China, conducted over the first half of 2020. This entails multimodal sea-air transportation for handling China’s e-commerce transshipment cargo.
