Railway station and airport handle holiday rush
2024-02-18 16:02:16
By Tan Maolin, Yichang International Communication Studio
This year’s eight-day Spring Festival vacation was cause for a significant increase in traffic to and from Yichang. The Sanxia Airport handled around 99,000 air passengers, more than a 40 percent increase from one year ago, while the railway stations sent a total of 483,000 passengers, a year-on-year increase of about 32 percent.
This year’s eight-day Spring Festival vacation was cause for a significant increase in traffic to and from Yichang. The Sanxia Airport handled around 99,000 air passengers, more than a 40 percent increase from one year ago, while the railway stations sent a total of 483,000 passengers, a year-on-year increase of about 32 percent.
Passengers waiting for trains in Yichang East Railway Station.
To meet the demand, Sanxia Airport coordinated with airlines to increase to more than 500 flights to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other destinations, connecting a total of 43 cities with direct flights. Daily air passenger traffic remained over 10,000 during the holidays, according to the Three Gorges Airport.
The airport also estimates that there will be another traffic peak on February 25, the day after the Lantern Festival, which is the 15th day of the first lunar month and the traditional ending of the Chinese New Year celebration. There is expected to be more than 100 flights arriving or departing from the airport with more than 13,000 passengers in total.
Passengers lining up to board at Sanxia Airport.
On February 17, the last day of the holiday, the nine local railway stations met the peak of departing passenger flow, with a total of 274 trains transporting more than 103,000 passengers towards Wuhan, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities. The railway authority dispatched 19 temporary trains to ease congestion.
In response to the continuous rise in back-to-work flow, Yichang added additional trains to provide "point to point" transportation for local workers going back to their jobs in larger cities, according to the Yichang Railway Department of Wuhan Railway.
