Dignitaries, inclduing Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, Minister Byun Chang-heum of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, President Kim Kyung-wook of Incheon Internaitonal Airport Corp. and Chairman Jin Sun-mi of the National Assembly Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee, particiapte in a ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of opening of Incheon International Airport on March 30. (Photo: IIAC)

Incheon International Airport marks its coming of age this year. The airport, which opened to traffic in March 2001, has established itself as a Northeast Asian airport hub and competed on par with its major rival airports.

The airport, which endured hardships caused by COVID-19 pandemic, is set to make a leap forward for another 20 years by laying the foundation for the future this year.

According to aviation industry sources, travel liberalization in the late 1980s caused international aviation demand to skyrocket, causing Gimpo International Airport reach to its capacity.

The idea of building a new airport emerged. In June 1990, Yeongjong Island was selected as the site of a new airport among 22 candidate sites.

The island was evaluated as having strengths such as cheaper investment costs through the reclaiming the deep coastal areas, the possibility of expanding space to 56.2 million sq. meters, minimizing noise, and one-hour proximity to the Seoul metropolitan area.

Construction began in November 1991 with a vision of becoming a future Northeast Asian aviation transportation hub center. I

t consisted of 100 months of construction and 5.6 trillion won in project costs before it was opened to public service in March 2001.

An Incheon International Airport Corp. official said, “The Incheon International Airport project had gone ahead as a state-financed one without interruption beyond ideologies and policies through seven governments from the 1980s.”

Incheon International Airport has been expanding to meet explosive aviation demand to secure an upper hand in the race to be Northeast Asia’s hub airport.

The airport has made significant achievements in a short period of time on the back of government policy support and its previous normalization efforts.

These steps have paid off: Incheon International Airport has grown to rank fifth in the world in terms of international passenger transportation and third in terms of cargo transportation as of 2019.

The airport has established itself as the global standard, based on expertise of services, operation and construction.

Incheon International Airport now makes every effort to enhance its standing by accelerating its overseas aviation market entry and ramping up its industry competitiveness.

Incheon International Airport has undergone hard times caused by the pandemic. The global aviation industry saw passenger travel nosedive 60 percent to some 1.8 billion people.

Incheon Airport, which depends mainly on international passengers, was hit with an 83 percent plunge. As the pandemic is forecast to be protracted into this year, global aviation demand is set to continue to decline.

Given the expected recovery of travel sentiment and vaccination against COVID-19, passengers via Incheon International Airport are predicted to stand between 5.05 million and 16.56 million this year, a drop of 76.5 percent to 92.8 percent from 2019.

The airport is now pulling out all stops to overcome the protracted pandemic and concentrate on innovation for a leap forward over the next 20 years. It plans to mobilize all of its resources to secure momentum for demand recovery, which will allow it to secure the upper hand in the future aviation market.

It will implement flexible strategies to cope with demand changes corresponding to the situation of the pandemic.

An Incheon International Airport official said the fourth phase construction project will be pushed ahead seamlessly, and fundamental steps will be taken to raise the airport’s competitiveness to meet new demand.

The airport will concentrate on creating new values and operation innovation to spearhead the new aviation industry paradigm, the official said.