No passengers for Korean airport > AviationRecord.com - Latest and Breaking Aviation and Airline News

Wednesday, 11 February 2009

No passengers for Korean airport
8:16 AM :: 0 Comments ::

SEOUL: South Korea has a $382 million “ghost airport” with not a single passenger in the past three months.

Yangyang International Airport on the east coast handled its last flight on November 1, the Korea Airport Corporation says.

The state firm admitted that last year 146 airport staff served a daily average of only 26 passengers at the seven-year-old airport.

Built with a government budget of A$382 million to promote regional tourism, the airport has posted a deficit each year for three consecutive years, it said.

In fact, the corporation estimated, 11 out of 14 local airports around the country lost money last year.

The conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper has termed Yangyang a “ghost airport”, blaming “incompetent planning and administration” by previous liberal governments.

It says the airports should either be shut down or privatised.

Korea Airport Corporation spokesman Park Soon-Cheon says the building of two other airports has been suspended, and authorities are considering turning a third airport, which is 85% complete at a cost of $207 million, into a pilot training centre.

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