Among China’s large airports, Zhengzhou International (CGO) is considered one of the luckiest, grows the fastest, and has the strongest support from the local government. Speaking of luck, CGO was chosen by Apple’s Asia Sidekick Foxconn in 2010 to build one of the largest iPhone manufacturing plants right on airport property. The reason is that the local government had previously approved a so-called comprehensive bonded zone (CBZ) as a tax-free and duty-free incentive. And this CBZ was ready to go when Foxconn was comparing potential factory sites among several contenders including Xi-an, Guangzhou, and Wuhan. CGO beat out all others to land this facility.
This strong government support was crucial and has been the main reason for CGO’s fast growth over the last decade. So it’s fair to say, that cargo was the CGO’s catalyst and led the way. And, its passenger segment quickly caught up. Now, the airport is planning for its future. SAAN was invited to provide master plan ideas and help to keep the growth going for the next 20 years.
Therefore, our master plan focuses on cargo, the very element that had made CGO. We also looked at CBZ, the comprehensive bonded zone, which will greatly impact CGO. We recommend creating a second CBD zone in the south of the airport and building CGO’s cargo hub in its southern half, forming a dual-axis airport structure: one for passengers and one for cargo.

This fundamental structure dictates how we look at CGO’s runway planning. The best and the most economical way for both near-term and long-term is a three-runway parallel spaced far enough for simultaneous independent operations. We calculated that the theoretical hourly capacity of this triple far parallel is about 135 aircraft movements, which is in line with the projected overall airport throughput for the year 2035. This means that CGO can push back constructing the 4th or 5th runway until the year 2040 and offset this savings by developing other airport infrastructure including building a full-scale cargo hub on the south side of the airport.


For the cargo hub design, we proposed an open, integrated, modular, and multilevel layout that consists of two large hub-based cargo centers, and one cargo village of multiple tenants. In addition, we designed a multimodal platform that will feature a high-speed rail (HSR) cargo center, and a transshipment center for cargo to go from air to rail, and road, and vice versa. As an inland city, Zhengzhou is the largest railway hub city in China. HSR for passenger service has been widely used and will be seamlessly connected with CGO. We also proposed HSR for cargo connection with CGO’s new cargo hub. Although HSR cargo is still not widely used, authorities in China have seen its tremendous power and are actively pushing for use in cargo, to relieve China’s crowded highways and airways.

For the vast new development properties in the east and southeast portions of the new terminal 3, our master plan favors a scheme of mixed-use and integrated layout for hotels, logistics, aviation supports and services, airline HQs, etc. We designed generous green belts for runway protection and airside buffers. These green spaces are extended and brought into the development properties as open spaces for low-density, garden-city-like communities.