Gateway to Asia
A raft of Open Skies agreements, the arrival of the A380 and award-winning customer service is driving Incheon Airport’s route development strategy, writes Oliver Clark.
I
ncheon Airport celebrates its 10-year anniversary on March 29 and the gateway certainly has plenty of reasons to mark the occasion. Sandwiched between the world’s second and third largest economies of China and Japan, and itself forecast to be the world’s fourth richest country by 2040, South Korea is in an enviable position. This is something on which its main gateway has sought to capitalise over the past decade in its efforts to become a key North East Asia hub. By all indications, it seems as if the gateway is well on its way to achieving its goal. More than a third of Incheon’s routes are to its two big neighbours,
20
with 34 connections to cities in China, including economically important destinations like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. Its network also stretches to less well-known destinations, such as Shenyang, Harbin in the north and Hainan, known as ‘China’s Hawaii’.
A further 28 routes serve Japanese cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, the island of Okinawa, Hakodate and Miyazaki. Other Asian markets such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and, more recently, Hawaii, are also growing. Despite the fragile state of the global
economy, the airport handled 33.4 million passengers in 2010, a 17.3%
increase on 2009. Of these, only 500,000 passengers were domestic travellers and the airport’s share of transit traffi c has increased from 11.5% in 2002 to 18% today.
The A380 made its debut at Incheon in December 2009 with the launch of Emirates services to Dubai. The aircraft is set to become a much more familiar sight at the airport from June this year, when Korean Air launches A380 services to Hong Kong and Tokyo and to Bangkok in July. Additional A380 aircraft deliveries later in the year will be utilised on long-haul US routes – New York from August and Los Angeles from October.
www.routes-news.com
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