The Three Gorges (Sanxia) Airport, located at the suburb of Hubei's Yichang City, has received regulatory approval from several agencies for regularly scheduled international flights, confirmed local sources on Sunday.

The General Customs Administration, the Ministry of Public Security, the General Administration of Civil Aviation, the General Administration for Quality Supervision and the General Staff Headquarters gave their permission for the flights.

The airport has invested about 100 million yuan (US$13.3 million) to upgrade its infrastructure. An international hall measuring 3,600 square meters and 3.58 kilometers of roads and runways have been completed. Offices and staff dormitories are to be finished by the end of this year.

Regular flights to the Republic of Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are planned to start in 2008.

The Three Gorges Airport opened in 1997, with 26 passenger routes to various cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen launched to date.

The airport is estimated to receive about 600,000 passengers this year, of whom 50,000 would be foreign nationals, up 15 percent from last year, said Wang Hong, deputy general manager of the airport.

Overseas charter flights started on Dec. 31, 2006, and there have been 67 such flights with 7,303 arriving and departing passengers. The average load factor of the flights was 70 percent, said Wang.

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2007)