Summer Passenger Influx Leaves Harbin Airport Crowded

The city of Harbin’s Taiping International Airport, in Heilongjiang province, received 8,036 flights in June, for an increase of 6.48-percent year-on-year, and a record of single-month high for the period.

The Heilongjiang Airport Management Group reported an influx of tourists for this year’s Charming Harbin Summer program that caused the number of people passing through the airport to swell, hitting a peak of 1.035 million, in June, up 11.85 percent year-on-year.

The appeal for visitors was the fun, beer, and music and cool air of the Northeast, at least since mid-June, when the number of southern Chinese visitors has increased nearly 20 percent compared with the same period last year and, according to one tourist named Sun, standing in an outdoor canopy at the International Beer Festival, “I’m from Guangdong province and asked for travel leave to come with my parents to escape the heat back home.”

The passenger load factor of inbound flights to Harbin reached 90 percent on average, and the flights from cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Taipei, and Seoul, South Korea’s load factor can get to 100 percent, all seeing a growth, which shows the growing popularity of the annual Charming Harbin Summer event attracting large number of tourists from across China and overseas.

Heilongjiang sits at the highest latitude in China and has some unique landscape, for example, Xingkai Lake near the city of Jixi, on the border with Russia, or the Arctic Village in the northernmost county, Mohe, or the border city of Heihe, with seats on flights from Harbin bound for these places almost 80-percent booked.