With a lot less fuss and publicity than the opening of Hong Kong`s new airport a couple of years back, March 29<sup>th</sup> 2001 saw a brand new international come on line to serve South Korea`s capital city of Seoul.

The new airport at Incheon (also commonly spelt Inchon) has been given the three letter IATA code of ICN – although airwaybills can still be completed showing the old city code of SEL for Seoul.

The old Seoul airport at Kimpo is remaining open (its new three letter code is GMP), but it to be used only for domestic flights and there will still be a presence there of Korean Customs. Therefore it is important to avoid confusion and we suggest that any letters of credit drawn up from the 29^th March 01 do not contain a request for carriage to Kimpo, or Seoul Kimpo to be shown on the airwaybill, as this could lead to delays upon arrival in Korea and further charges (for the trucking between the airports and the double handling).

The new Incheon airport is the culmination of a multi-billion Dollar nine year building project, which has seen 46 square kilometres of land being reclaimed from the sea off the island of Yongjong to form the main airport area, along with the construction of a six lane highway to link the airport with the city of Seoul (52 kilometres to the east). It is planned that there will be a rapid transit rail system to move passengers to the centre of Seoul – but this is still at least 4 years from completion.

From day one 48 airlines will start operating 354 daily flights out of ICN. It is expected that 27 million passengers and 1.7 million tons of cargo will be handled in the first year of operation.

There are many advantages to the new airport. The most notable being that it is much larger than the old one at Kimpo from day one, and it has room to grow. Indeed although upon opening there will be just two runways, there are already plans to have a further two up and running by 2020. An additional advantage to the new airport is that all the cargo warehouses have been built from the ground up with state of the art handling systems.

The cargo handling warehouses at ICN have more than double the square meterage of the old ones at Kimpo. Which should allow Seoul`s new airport to continue the amazing growth in the amount of cargo handled which was started at Kimpo (the average year on year growth rate for the last 10 years has been 16percent!)

One minor downside to the opening of the new airport is that all the support services around the old airport have to move to new locations near ICN and this includes freight forwarders. It is our understanding that at the present time only 30 of the 150 forwarders at Kimpo have yet opened their own warehouse at Incheon. However as you would expect our partner agent in Korea – Is one of the 30 at the new airport.

The official website of Incheon airport (in English) can be found at: -