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Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport (ZSAM/XMN) is the principal gateway to Xiamen on China's Fujian coast, a busy hub for XiamenAir with a single long runway built out over reclaimed land on the north shore of Xiamen Island. Originally constructed by Japanese occupying forces during the Second World War, it has passed through military, abandoned and civilian phases before becoming one of southeastern China's busiest airports, though it is scheduled to be superseded by a new airport on Dadeng Island in late 2026.
Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport, known by its ICAO code ZSAM and IATA code XMN, serves the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province on China's southeastern coast. It is operated by the Xiamen International Airport Group and functions as the main hub for XiamenAir, with China Eastern Airlines, Shandong Airlines and Spring Airlines also using it as a focus city. For a simulator pilot the field offers an unusually storied history and a striking coastal setting, sitting on the north side of Xiamen Island with water on three sides and the Taiwan Strait, and the once-tense proximity of Kinmen Island, close by.
The airport lies in Huli district on the north side of Xiamen Island, about 10 kilometres from the city's downtown area. Traffic is worked by Xiamen Approach, Xiamen Ground and Xiamen Tower, indicating a busy controlled environment typical of a major Chinese international airport.
The airport has a single physical runway, 05/23, a hard-surfaced strip roughly 10,650 feet long, fully lit, with an instrument landing system serving both approach directions. Field elevation is 46 feet.
Radio services are provided under the callsign Xiamen, comprising Approach on 121.35 MHz, an ATIS broadcast on 126.25 MHz, Ground on 121.7 MHz, and Tower on 118.25 MHz. Both ends of runway 05/23 are equipped with an ILS, supporting instrument approaches in either direction.
The airfield's origins lie in the Japanese occupation of Xiamen during the Second World War: in 1941, occupying Japanese forces built the airport east of Gaoqi Village as a military airfield to defend against American forces, and it was also used for scheduled civilian flights to Taipei, Fuzhou, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. After Japan's surrender the airport was reclaimed by the Nationalist government and placed under the civilian Xiamen office of the Civil Aviation Administration, before management passed to the Republic of China Air Force's 242nd Supply Squadron in February 1949. The last flight before the Communist takeover departed on 24 August 1949, carrying senior Nationalist officials to Taipei, after which the field closed as the People's Liberation Army occupied the area. The airport was subsequently expanded for potential operations against Taiwan, completed in 1952, and underwent a second renovation in 1955, but it remained closed because of its proximity to the attack radius of Nationalist-held Kinmen Island. The modern airport dates from 1982, when a loan equivalent to 21 million US dollars from the Kuwait Fund financed redevelopment, making it the first airport in China built with foreign funding and managed by a local government. It reopened on 22 October 1983, with the first departure being a CAAC flight to Shanghai. Rapid growth in passenger traffic through the following decade led to the construction of a second terminal in 1993 and a third in 1996; the original terminal was demolished in 2012, and a fourth terminal, built to relieve overcrowding, opened on 28 December 2014.
Xiamen Gaoqi remains a major international airport, ranked among the busiest in China for passenger, cargo and aircraft movements, and serving as the home base for XiamenAir alongside China Southern Airlines and Hebei Airlines among others. Terminal 3 (incorporating the former Terminal 2) handles both international and domestic services, with Terminal 4 providing additional capacity a short distance to the east. Having reached the limits of its site, the airport is due to cease civilian operations once the new Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport, under construction on Dadeng Island, becomes operational in late 2026.