Asia's first professional cargo hub airport put into operation in Central China

EMPOWERED BY CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY

Being the only professional cargo hub airport in China, Ezhou Huahu Airport has made breakthroughs in digitalization and intelligent operation. Builders of the project have applied for more than 70 patents and copyrights for new technologies, such as 5G, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, for making the new airport safer, greener and smarter.

For instance, there are more than 50,000 sensors beneath the runway for capturing the vibration waveform generated by aircraft taxiing and monitoring runway incursion.

Thanks to an intelligent cargo sorting system, work efficiency in the logistics transfer center has been significantly enhanced. With this smart system, the transfer center's planned production capacity stands at 280,000 parcels per hour in the short term, which can reach 1.16 million pieces per hour in the long run.

As it's a cargo hub airport, freight planes mainly take off and land at night. To save human labor and ensure airport safety and efficiency, airport operators hope that more machines can be deployed to substitute humans for nighttime work.

"We've spent nearly a year testing unmanned vehicles in designated areas on the apron, aiming to build an unmanned apron in the future," Pan said.