Departure
99%
vs 95% ▲ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Wuhan Tianhe International Airport is the principal gateway to Wuhan and the busiest airport in central China, sited in the suburban Huangpi District some 26 km north of the city centre. It is a hub for China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines and a focus city for Air China, handling well over 30 million passengers a year across a large multi-runway complex.
Wuhan Tianhe International Airport serves Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in south-central China, and is operated as the region's major commercial gateway. It replaced the old Wangjiadun and Nanhu airports when it opened in 1995 and has grown into the busiest airport in central China, acting as a hub for China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines and a focus city for Air China. For a simulator pilot, ZHHH offers a large, modern international airport environment with long runways and a substantial mix of domestic and international traffic.
The airport lies in Wuhan's suburban Huangpi District, roughly 26 km (16 mi) north of the Wuhan city centre. As a major international hub, it sits within controlled airspace commensurate with its status as a large commercial airport handling tens of millions of passengers annually.
The database records a single physical runway, 04/22, measuring 11,142 ft with a hard surface and runway lighting. No ILS is listed for this runway in the authoritative data.
Wuhan air traffic is worked under the callsign WUHAN, with WUHAN TWR on 122.7 MHz and WUHAN GND on 121.65 MHz. ATIS is broadcast on 126.6 MHz.
Tianhe Airport was built to replace the ageing Wangjiadun and Nanhu airports, which had become too small to cope with Wuhan's growing air traffic by the early 1990s. Construction of the first phase began in December 1989 and finished in April 1994, with the airport opening for service on 15 April 1995; Nanhu Airport closed the same day, with passengers still waiting there bussed directly to the new field. The airport initially handled only domestic flights before being redesignated international by the Civil Aviation Administration of China in 2000. Wangjiadun Airport remained open for military use for some years before being closed and demolished in 2007. The field has since been expanded three times, adding further terminals, a new control tower and additional runways. Wuhan's first international flight, to Vientiane, had actually begun in 1992 while the city was still served by the old airports. Intercontinental services followed later, with Air France beginning a Paris route in April 2012 and China Southern Airlines adding a San Francisco service via Guangzhou from December 2014. The airport was closed on 23 January 2020 during the Hubei lockdowns at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in Wuhan, and reopened on 8 April 2020 after large-scale disinfection.
Wuhan Tianhe International Airport is now a major hub for China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines and a focus city for Air China, connecting Wuhan to a wide network of domestic and international destinations. Since 2019 transit passengers from a large number of countries, including EU states, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, have been able to enter China visa-free for up to 144 hours when connecting through the airport. It remains the sole passenger airport serving the Wuhan metropolitan area directly, with the nearest alternative being Ezhou Huahu International Airport in the neighbouring city of Ezhou.
