Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport is working on plans to convert part of its old terminal into a dedicated low-cost facility.
Speaking to Flightglobal on the sidelines of Routes Asia 2015, its general manager of the marketing department Long Qiang says the airport is looking at this because it sees “the development of LCCs as a future trend”.
He adds that the low-cost terminal, which will have a capacity of 10 million, will however only operate domestic services.
There are currently six LCCs serving Shenzhen: AirAsia, Tigerair, Spring Airlines, Lucky Air, China United Airlines and West Air.
The airport shut its old terminal, after a new 45 million capacity terminal opened for operations in 2013.
Long says the airport handled 36.3 million passengers last year and that he expects the terminal’s capacity to be hit by 2018, and that the upcoming low-cost terminal should provide some relief.
Shenzhen airport’s network is however overwhelmingly focused on the domestic market, with international services accounting for only 5% of its network. The target is to grow the figure to 10% over the next five years.
Shenzhen is however in a tough position, because Hong Kong International, an extremely strong hub airport, is so close by, says Long.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
