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Slicing through the airlines

High-speed rail has hit mainland airlines, and the trains' popularity is likely to continue to hurt smaller airports and short-haul flights

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High-speed rail has been popular on the mainland, with 100 million passengers travelling on the Beijing-Shanghai line alone. Photo: AP

The integration of air travel and high-speed rail services on the mainland will benefit major airports like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, but hurt smaller airports and short-haul flights, say industry players.

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After Hong Kong's high-speed rail, the Express Rail Link, is completed in 2015, it will benefit Hong Kong airport because many passengers will take high-speed trains from the south of the mainland to Hong Kong, and transfer to international flights from Hong Kong airport, said Zheng Tianxiang, a transport professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.

Given the high-speed train journey of four hours, 10 minutes between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou, people south of the Yangtze River will find it convenient to take high-speed trains to Hong Kong, said Zheng.

However, Hong Kong's future high-speed train station, the West Kowloon Terminus, lacks a direct high-speed rail link to Chek Lap Kok Airport, which diminishes the attractiveness of the airport as a transit hub for high-speed train passengers from the mainland, he added.

"High-speed rail is a good thing for big airports. For small airports, it poses competition," said Liu Wu Jun, chief technical officer of the Shanghai Airport Authority.

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For example, the airport in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, previously had one daily flight to Beijing, but that has ceased, Liu said. Now, passengers from Wuxi take high-speed trains to the Hongqiao transport hub in Shanghai, where they take a plane to Beijing, Liu said.

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