Wuhan Tianhe International Airport

Wuhan Tianhe International is the busiest airport in central China and the principal aviation gateway to Hubei Province, handling roughly 28M passengers (2024) from its position at the geographic center of the country — a location that makes Wuhan, in planning terms, the 'crossroads of nine provinces' and the natural transfer point between North-South and East-West flows on both the rail and air networks. WUH sits 26 km (16 mi) north of central Wuhan in the Huangpi district at 113 ft (34 m) elevation. China Southern Airlines operates its largest central-China base at WUH, joined by a substantial China Eastern operation, Air China, Juneyao, XiamenAir, Hainan Airlines, and the full Chinese low-cost lineup (Spring Airlines, Chengdu Airlines, 9 Air). International service includes Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Korean Air (Seoul-Incheon), ANA (Tokyo-Narita), Qatar Airways (Doha), Emirates (Dubai historically), Ethiopian Airlines (Addis Ababa), and multiple European seasonal services resumed post-pandemic. The route network reaches 110 destinations across 34 airlines, weighted heavily toward domestic China-China flows. Three runways support Terminal 3 (opened 2017, 495,000 sqm / 5.3M sqft single-terminal building, one of the largest in central China) — the 11,811 ft (3,600 m) primary 05L/23R plus 11,155 ft (3,400 m) 04/22 and 10,498 ft (3,200 m) 05R/23L. Terminal 2 remains in use for domestic overflow. The airport is directly integrated with China's high-speed rail network via the Tianhe Airport Intercity Railway Station in the Ground Transportation Center — a relatively uncommon configuration in China that gives WUH single-ticket connectivity to Wuchang, Hankou, and onward HSR to Beijing and Guangzhou. A fourth runway and Terminal 4 are under planning toward a 2030 capacity target of 80M passengers.