Smaller airports seeing new surge in business

Domestic airlines seek opportunity for profit in third, fourth-tier cities

More domestic airlines are launching new flights connecting less-densely populated smaller Chinese cities, and those areas are seeing more remarkable growth in air traffic than major cities.

Last year, the airports of Quanzhou in Fujian province, Nantong, Changzhou and Xuzhou in Jiangsu province, Jieyang in Guangdong province and Yichang in Hubei province saw their annual passenger throughput reach 2.5 million, a jump of more than 30 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.