Sanya airport handles over 3.57m during Spring Festival

The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush came to an end on March 13, but not before Sanya Phoenix International Airport managed 18,000 flights and handled over 3.57 million passenger trips.

That represented year-on-year increases of 1.0 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.

Remarkably, on Feb 14 and on Feb 25, the airport set a record with 166 wide-body aircraft flights taking place on each day.

During the Feb 15-23 Spring Festival holiday, the airport saw a surge in passenger traffic, handling 4,080 flights and over 845,000 passenger trips.

Nearly 100,000 travelers passed through the airport in a single day on Feb 21, breaking the record for the period.

That performance underscored the vibrant market activity following the launch of island-wide special customs operations in the Hainan Free Trade Port.

To manage the peak travel period, Sanya Phoenix International Airport leveraged the new T3 terminal, alongside T1 and T2, to effectively distribute passenger flows.

Ten airlines have already moved their operations to T3, which during the travel rush handled over 3,400 flights and served more than 730,000 passenger trips — about 19 percent and 20 percent, respectively, of the airport's total volume during the Spring Festival travel rush.

It's understood that the move has significantly boosted overall efficiency and improved the travel experience for fliers.

When it came to flight routes, the airport teamed up with airlines to optimize capacity, deploying more wide-body aircraft to key destinations.

New routes such as Sanya-Dazhou-Lhasa flight have been launched, along with the Frankfurt-Bangkok-Sanya route, a route under the fifth freedom of the air, the Sanya-Prague route, a route under the seventh freedom of the air, and a new Sanya-Irkutsk international route.

The freedoms of the air are a set of commercial aviation rights that grant a country's airlines privileges to enter and land in another country's airspace.

Overall, the efforts are believed to have expanded the network and enhanced cultural and tourism exchanges between China and other countries.

On the services side, the airport rolled out nine customer-friendly initiatives during the period, such as opening additional check-in counters during peak times, increasing broadcast reminders and putting on dedicated lanes for passengers without checked baggage.

These measures aimed to reduce the risk of missed flights and ensure a smoother travel experience.