Yongxing Island Airport , also known as Woody Island Airport, is a civilian-military dual-use airport located on Yongxing (Woody) Island, the largest of the disputed

Paracel Islands The Paracel Islands, also known as the Xisha Islands () and the Hoang Sa Archipelago ( vi, Quần đảo Hoàng Sa, lit=Yellow Sand Archipelago), are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. The archipelago includes about 130 small coral ...

in the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phil ...

. Yongxing/Woody Island is occupied and administered by

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

(PRC) as the seat of

Sansha Sansha City () is a prefecture-level city under the Hainan province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and is the southernmost and least populated prefecture in China, with the smallest land area but the largest maritime territory. The ci ...

city of

Hainan Province Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

. The airport was expanded in 1990 to increase the combat range of Chinese warplanes. Further construction and reclamation of land commenced in 2012 to lengthen the airstrip. This work was completed in October 2014. Military drills with fighter aircraft landing and taking off at Yongxing Island Airport were carried out and telecast on

CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...

in December 2017.

Facilities

Yongxing Island Airport has a runway that is long, capable of handling any fourth generation fighter aircraft of the Chinese airforce such as the Sukhoi Su-30MK2. The airport has four

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

s, a

radar navigation Radar navigation is the utilization of marine and aviation radar systems for vessel and aircraft navigation. When a craft is within radar range of land or special radar aids to navigation, the navigator can take distances and angular bearings ...

station and four large fuel tanks, enabling it to serve as a forward deployment base for refueling warplanes on combat missions. A two storey terminal building with control tower is found on south side of the runway. It has a domestic arrival and departure areas. The terminal has three gates to handle civil airliners.

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

Aerial photos of Yongxing Island and the airport
{{authority control Airports in Hainan Chinese Air Force bases Airports established in 1990 1990 establishments in China Paracel Islands

Facilities

Airlines and destinations

See also

References

External links