Yinchuan Hedong International Airport is the primary airport serving

Yinchuan Yinchuan (, ; ) is the capital of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, and was the capital of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty. It has an area of and a total population of 2,859,074 according to the 2020 Chinese census, and its buil ...

, the capital of

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1 ...

, People's Republic of China. It is located southeast of downtown Yinchuan in the town of Linghe of Lingwu City. A relatively small airport compared to many airports in China, it nevertheless is the autonomous region's main

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

gateway. Its name "Hedong" literally means "East of the River" and derives from the airport's location east of the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

. It is connected to over 20 cities by either direct flights, or transferring in

Xi'an Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by #Name, other names, is the list of capitals in China, capital of Shaanxi, Shaanxi Province. A Sub-provincial division#Sub-provincial municipalities, sub-provincial city o ...

and

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

. The

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

building covers a total area of . The airport handled 10,575,393 passengers in 2019, making it the 38th busiest airport in China.

History

Hedong Airport was constructed after

Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport Yinchuan Xihuayuan Airport was the former main airport of Yinchuan, Ningxia, China. It was built on orders of Ningxia governor Ma Hongkui in 1935 as a military airport with a gravel runway. The airport was closed from September 1949 to September ...

became constrained to expand and modernize. The first test flight was on 21 August 1997, and the airport was officially opened on 6 September that same year. In 2013, the airport handled 4,247,843 passengers, in 2017, the airport handled 67,079 flights, almost 8 million passengers and 40,000 tons of cargo.

History

Airlines and destinations

Passenger