Guilin Liangjiang International Airport

Guilin Liangjiang International Airport (KWL) is the primary aviation gateway to one of China's most recognizable tourist landscapes — the karst peaks of the Li River valley — and the busiest airport in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Serving a catchment that includes Yangshuo, Longsheng and the Longji Rice Terraces, KWL has climbed into the top 50 Chinese airports by annual passenger volume, with traffic rebounding sharply toward its pre-pandemic peak of roughly 9 million passengers. The airport is operated by Guilin Liangjiang International Airport Co., a subsidiary of the Guangxi Airport Management Group. KWL sits in Lingui District about 28 km (17 mi) southwest of Guilin's city center at an elevation of 570 ft (174 m). A single 10,499 ft (3,200 m) concrete runway, paired with a newly rebuilt parallel taxiway, supports widebody operations up to Boeing 777 and Airbus A330 size. Terminal 2, opened in 2018 and covering approximately 80,000 m², was designed around the region's famous karst silhouettes and lifted annual capacity to 12 million passengers, with 62 check-in counters, 16 boarding bridges and dedicated international and domestic processors under one roof. Thirty-one airlines link KWL to 62 nonstop destinations, including international services to Seoul, Osaka, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong alongside dense trunk routes to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing. China Southern, China Eastern, Air China, Hainan Airlines, Spring and Juneyao anchor the carrier mix, with inbound leisure traffic from Southeast Asia and South Korea a defining feature of seasonal schedules that rarely fall outside the Chinese top-tier for tourist-driven operations (2025).