Golmud Airport guide

Golmud Airport is a dual-use military and civil airfield serving Golmud, a city in the west of Qinghai province. Construction ran from 1966 to August 1971, funded by the Ministry of National Defense, and civil service began in November 1974. Flights stopped in 1985 for lack of Il-18 spare parts, resumed in 1996, stopped again in 1997 when the Tu-154 was retired, and restarted on 28 November 2000 with a Shandong Airlines CRJ route via Xining to Qingdao.

The airport sits at 2,842 metres above sea level, which makes it a high-altitude field. It has one concrete runway, 09/27, 4,800 metres long. An expansion approved in July 2015 with an investment of 430 million yuan started in March 2016 and finished in September 2017.

In 2025 the airport handled 362,343 passengers, 3,946 aircraft movements and 1,335.7 tonnes of cargo, below the 750,000 passengers and 2,250 tonnes set as the 2025 targets. Scheduled routes link Golmud with Xining, Xi'an, Chengdu, Lhasa and Zhengzhou.