Haikou Meilan International Airport

Haikou Meilan International is Hainan Province's primary gateway and the busiest airport on any Chinese island, handling 24.8M passengers (2023) en route to China's only tropical province. Its growth trajectory is tied directly to Beijing's 2018 designation of Hainan as a free-trade port and offshore duty-free shopping zone — a policy that turned the island into a domestic substitute for Hong Kong and Macau and reshaped HAK's commercial mix. Hainan Airlines bases its primary hub operation here, joined by subsidiary HNA Group carriers and significant operations from China Southern, China Eastern, Air China, Spring Airlines, and Juneyao. International scope was historically modest but has expanded post-2020 with routes to Bangkok, Phuket, Singapore, Seoul, Osaka, Moscow, and Almaty, reflecting Hainan's visa-free arrival policy for citizens of 59 countries. Across 42 airlines the airport serves 138 destinations on 303 scheduled routes, with the overwhelming share being dense point-to-point Chinese domestic capacity. Two parallel runways handle movements: 09/27 at 11,811 ft (3,600 m) and 10/28 at 11,811 ft (3,600 m), a configuration that allows independent parallel operations and supports the airport's Category I capacity of 60 movements per hour. Terminal 2, opened December 2021 at 296,000 sq m (3.19M sq ft), quadrupled HAK's passenger capacity and introduced an integrated ground-transport hub with the Hainan Island Ring High-Speed Rail. Terminal 1 (closed for refurbishment 2022) will reopen 2026 as a domestic-only concourse. A third runway and Terminal 3 are planned for completion 2030 to support 60M annual passengers. Elevation is 75 ft (23 m), and the airport sits on a 15 sq km coastal site with flood-mitigation infrastructure unusual for a mainland Chinese hub.