Diqing Shangri-La Airport Guide

Diqing Shangri-La Airport serves Shangri-La City in the Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of northwest Yunnan. It sits at about 3,280 metres above sea level, among the highest commercial airports in China, on the plateau at Lazanba just southwest of the county town. The ICAO code is ZPDQ. It was known as Diqing Zhongdian Airport until August 2002.

Construction began in January 1998 and the first scheduled flight, a Yunnan Airlines Boeing 737-700, landed on 30 April 1999. A 350 million yuan expansion started in September 2007 and added a new terminal building, which opened on 16 June 2009. The terminal covers 3,073 square metres and the apron has four aircraft stands. A fourth-phase project from 2020 to 2021 overlaid the runway with new asphalt and upgraded the navigation lights.

There is one runway, 16/34, which is 3,600 metres long. The airport has no parallel taxiway, so landing aircraft backtaxi along the runway to the apron. In 2025 the airport handled 428,318 passengers, 4,836 aircraft movements and 1,608.6 tonnes of cargo. Flights link Shangri-La with Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Lhasa.