Airport Hub · Lukou (NKG)
Opened in 1997 and built for 30 million passengers, Nanjing Lukou hit 30.58 million in 2019 and has spent the recovery setting daily records — with cargo growing even faster than people.
Lukou is a 4F-class airport — the highest category, able to take the A380 — with two 3,600-m runways, 425,000 m² of terminal space and 143 gates. It sits about 35 km south of the center, tied to Nanjing South station by metro Line S1 since 2014, so the air–rail transfer is a single ride.
Design capacity is 30 million passengers a year; the 2019 actual was 30.58 million, and the summer of 2025 brought fresh single-day records — over 108,000 on 24 July and 112,000 on 8 August. Expect full check-in halls at the dawn and dusk banks, and treat the 35-minute domestic cut-off (30 minutes with no bags from June 2026) as a gift, not a plan.
The leading indicator is freight: in 2025 Lukou’s international import–export tonnage passed 100,000 tonnes for the first time, up 33% year on year. Delta manufacturing — electronics, biotech, auto parts — increasingly flies out of Nanjing instead of trucking to Shanghai.
For travelers that means more long-haul and widebody options on the 158-route network, and steadier schedules in peak season. Watch the cargo figure: in China’s secondary hubs, passenger routes follow the pallets by about two years.
NKG is one of the few Chinese airports already living beyond its design capacity, and it shows — arrive early, fly midweek where you can, and treat the S1-to-Nanjing-South link as your default transfer. If a new long-haul route appears in the next two years, it will be because the freight got there first.
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