China Eastern Airlines' Airbus A320 became the first commercial flight to land at Shanghai Pudong International Airport's long-awaited fourth runway. The plane was carrying passengers from Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu, on flight MU2351 and landed in Shanghai at 10:05 am on March 28.

The fourth runway is 440 meters east of the second runway and is 3,800 meters long and 60 meters wide. It was built with to highest standards and can accommodate the world's largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380 superjumbo. The project was completed in late 2013 and gained an operating license from the Civil Aviation Administration of China on March 25, 2015.

With the opening of the new runway, the airport is capable of handling 60 million passengers, 555,000 flights and 4.75 million tons of cargo per year. This makes Pudong airport the only airport in the China with four runways and marks the start of a new phase in its aviation development. The new runway also is also expected to reduce delays.

Pudong International Airport hit a milestone in 2014 as over 50 million passengers passed through the airport, ranking it among the world's top 20 busiest airports in terms of traffic. Those figures are expected to grow up to 80 million passengers and 3.4 million tons of cargo by 2020, putting it among the world's top 10 busiest airports.

As for the airport's future growth, the construction of another 3,400-meter long and 45-meter wide runway has begun to the east of the fourth runway and a satellite terminal with 105 gates is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2018.

In the upcoming summer schedule, the airport will handle 8,710 flights every week, an increase of 4.5 percent from the spring season. A total of 210 new passenger and cargo routes will be added to the airport, including 111 regional and international routes and 99 domestic routes.

Edited by Jacob Hooson

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