China plans to build 69 airports for regional planes

China plans to build more small airports for regional jets in remote border regions even though many of the country's airports are losing money, officials said Monday.

The country plans to build 69 regional airports by the end of 2015. Most of these airports will be in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Yunnan and Heilongjiang, Xia Xinhua, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, told a forum Monday.

China already has 182 airports but few serve small jets.

The country has 181 regional jets compared with more than 20,000 in the US, Xia said.

"Yunnan, Guizhou and Qinghai have many remote areas at high altitudes and these regions would best be served by planes with less than 60 seats," he added.

He said the administration has allocated a 1 billion yuan average annual subsidy for the operation of regional airports but that it's not enough.

Some 90 percent of the country's regional airports are losing money, said Wang Fei, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top planning body.

But overall, local economies benefit from these airports, which bring tourists and logistics business, Wang added.

China is developing its first domestically made regional jets — the ARJ-21 and Xinzhou-60, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

China plans to continue to build airports even though 130 of the country's 182 airports lost nearly 3 billion yuan combined last year, said Li Jiaxiang, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Each airport loses about 20 million yuan on average per year.

"We should not just look at airport profits but take into account that an airport can boost the economy of the region it serves," Li said.