Hohhot Baita International Airport

Hohhot Baita International Airport is the main airport for Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the third-largest province-level administrative unit in China by land area (1.18M km² / 456,000 sq mi), and serves as the principal aviation gateway to the Mongolian steppe, Gobi Desert, and the trans-Eurasian rail corridor that extends north to Ulaanbaatar and Moscow. HET handles roughly 13M passengers annually across 189 weekly routes to 71 destinations on 36 airlines, anchored by Hohhot's role as Inner Mongolia's political and administrative capital and a key node on the China–Mongolia–Russia economic corridor. The airport is a major base of Tianjin Airlines, China Southern Airlines' Inner Mongolia branch, and China United Airlines, with Hohhot functioning as the primary connector between the Inner Mongolian hinterland and the Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) megaregion. A single 11,811 ft (3,600 m) concrete runway handles all traffic, with two parallel runways under construction as part of the long-planned replacement airport, Hohhot Shengle International, which will open in phases from 2026 approximately 40 km (25 mi) south of the city. Once Shengle opens, HET will close to commercial traffic and be redeveloped. HET sits at 3,556 ft (1,084 m) elevation on the edge of the Loess Plateau, making it one of the higher-altitude major airports in eastern China — high enough to produce small performance penalties on hot summer days but well below the true high-altitude thresholds of Lanzhou, Xining, or Lhasa. International reach is limited but strategically significant: direct service operates to Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia), Moscow (via charter), Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, and Bangkok, with the Ulaanbaatar route being the most important international gateway between China and landlocked Mongolia.