China's Kunming Airport aims for a hub role from Europe and North America to Southeast Asia

Kunming in southwest China has been the country's traditional gateway to Southeast Asia, and flights to Southeast Asia account for 60% of Kunming's international seats, making Kunming an exception to most other Chinese airports mostly with larger international exposure to Northeast Asia. Kunming hopes to use its Southeast Asian network to be a transfer hub from North America and Europe, and in 2014 its regional government established a RMB200 million (USD32 million) fund for new international routes.

Such traffic, while plausible in the long-term, will be the icing on the cake. 93% of the airport's seats in Mar-2015 are domestic and Kunming carried 32m passengers in 2014. International will be a small but growing part of Kunming's story, with sixth-freedom Europe/North America-Southeast Asia traffic even smaller. Kunming's geography disadvantages it in having long-haul flights to North America.

While geography is more favourable to Europe, competition from Southeast Asian and Gulf carriers is strong and Kunming will be up against mighty networks. Point-to-point traffic volumes are not large enough to contemplate filler connecting traffic and Kunming cannot rely on connecting traffic the way Dubai can.