Korla Licheng Airport guide

Korla Licheng Airport serves Korla, the seat of Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture in southern Xinjiang. Its ICAO code is ZWKL, and the field sits at 927 metres above sea level. It lies about 17 kilometres from the city centre.

The site began as a military airfield, built from 1967 and completed in 1970 for the PLA Air Force. Civil flights started in 1971, stopped in 1998 and resumed in 2003. The current airport entered service on 20 December 2007 and is still shared between civil and military use. Xinjiang Airport Group took over management in 2004 and now runs Korla jointly with the Qiemo and Ruoqiang airports.

A single concrete runway, 04/22, is 2,780 metres long and 45 metres wide. A larger terminal building of 25,000 square metres opened in November 2017. Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and China Express Airlines fly from Korla to Urumqi, Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Shanghai. In 2025 the airport handled about 2.96 million passengers and 27,439 aircraft movements, plus 9,275.7 tonnes of cargo.