Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Hotan Airport lies in the far west of China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, serving the desert city of Hotan on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. It is a dual-use military-civilian field, home to a long single runway capable of handling large transport and fighter aircraft, and it has a documented history stretching back to the 1930s.
Hotan Airport (ICAO ZWTN) serves the city of Hotan in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China, and is operated as a joint civilian and military facility. It is used by the Xinjiang Airport Group for scheduled airline services and by the People's Liberation Army, which has stationed aircraft there and has used the field to test fighter types. For the simulator pilot it offers a very long, high-altitude desert runway with a mix of civil and military traffic, set against the backdrop of the Taklamakan Desert and the Kunlun Mountains.
The airfield sits in Hotan Prefecture in the far south-west of Xinjiang, on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, close to the city of Hotan itself. No specific airspace classification, controlled airspace boundaries or neighbouring aerodromes are given in the available sources.
Hotan Airport has a single physical runway, 11/29, 10,453 feet long with a hard surface. There is no ILS available at the field. Field elevation is 4,639 feet.
The tower callsign operates on 118.65 MHz. No other frequencies, navaids or published instrument approach procedures are given in the available sources.
An airfield at Hotan was first established in 1931 as a simple earthen strip used mainly for military or emergency purposes, and for a long time it had no formal name beyond the place name itself. Proper construction began in May 1956, with the field completed and brought into use in 1957 as a rudimentary airport with an 1,800-metre earthen runway typical of Xinjiang's early airfields, built to meet basic transport needs of the time. In 1964 the Air Force extended the runway to 2,800 metres to accommodate aircraft of up to 75.8 tonnes. A second phase of expansion and renovation began in 2002 with an investment of 176 million yuan, upgrading the field to a 4D flight zone designed for 81,900 passengers a year, and this work was completed in 2004. Further expansion was approved in 2014, with a budget of 485 million yuan aimed at handling 1.6 million passengers, 6,100 tonnes of cargo and mail, and 13,300 aircraft movements annually by 2025. The airport was officially renamed Hotan Kungang Airport on 20 February 2023, taking the name Kungang from a phrase in the classical Chinese text the Thousand Character Classic referring to the origin of jade. In April 2024 a second runway was brought into use alongside the original one, making Hotan the first airport in Xinjiang to operate with two runways, though this second runway forms no part of the current physical runway data recorded for this field.
Hotan continues to operate as a mixed military and civilian airport. The People's Liberation Army maintains aircraft at the field and has used it for testing next-generation fighter types. On the civil side it is served by several Chinese carriers, including Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, China Express Airlines, Chengdu Airlines, Hainan Airlines, Qingdao Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Tianjin Airlines, Urumqi Air and West Air, connecting Hotan with destinations across China.