SamScene has recently released their rendition of Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport (ZSAM) for Microsoft Flight Simulator, serving the Chinese city of Xiamen with a yearly average of 14.9 million passengers.

The airport was built in the 1980s on top of the former Xiamen Airport, abandoned for more than 30 years, with nothing left but a gravel runway. It opened in 1983, becoming China’s first “International” airport (naming-wise). That was not the single thing it pioneered: it was the first airport built with foreign capital in the country, the first to decentralize local government to implement localized management, and the first to rely on self-raised funds for large-scale expansion work.

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If one thought that was pioneering enough, they were also the first airport to set up an air cargo terminal in cooperation with civil aviation circles on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the first to introduce international low-cost airlines.

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Between 1984 and 2014, the airport went from 100,000 yearly passengers to 20.8 million, making it one of the busiest single-runway airports in China.

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It was expanded for the last time in 2014 with the opening of Terminal 4, and now it’s constrained by urban development around it, which made them kickstart the construction of a new airport on Dadeng Island, with two runways, a 550,000 square meter terminal, and the ability to handle up to 45 million passengers.

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It’s a hub for XiamenAir and a focus city for Shandong Airlines, China Eastern, and Spring Airlines. The visitors’ list includes Air Macau, Cebu Pacific, Korean Air, Malaysia Airlines, and Philippine Airlines.

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The scenery features an accurate rendition of the airport, with an up-to-date ground layout, custom ground textures, custom jetways, realistic night lighting, basic interiors for performance (T4), and landside buildings.

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It’s available on SimMarket for roughly $17.79, requiring at least 1.86 GB of free hard disk space to install.

Stay tuned to Threshold for more flight simulation news!

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