China Southern Airlines has launched a bonded aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) base in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, boosting the aggregation of airport-related industries and promoting high-level opening up in the region.

Located in the Urumqi area of the China (Xinjiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone in the regional capital Urumqi, the base, the first such facility in Xinjiang, was inaugurated on Friday.

The bonded MRO service will leverage the Urumqi Diwopu International Airport (UDIA) to handle aircraft MRO from around the world, capitalizing on high technology, low costs and high efficiency, said Han Wensheng, general manager of the company.

As the company's first bonded aircraft MRO business in China, it will extend the aviation MRO industry chain, attract more people and logistics to gather in Xinjiang, and help develop a new "bonded+" mode in foreign trade, better serving the construction under the Belt and Road Initiative, said Han.

Also on Friday, Xinjiang put into use a public bonded warehouse allowing overseas airlines to store and manage aviation materials together, enhancing the MRO efficiency and emergency response speed.

With the gradual improvement of the aviation industry chain, Xinjiang's airport-related economy has flourished, significantly increasing the air cargo import and export volume in Urumqi.

As of September, the UDIA had opened international passenger routes from Urumqi to 20 destinations in 16 countries including Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

The construction of Terminal 4, the largest single building in the airport's expansion project, is underway. Once completed, it will be able to handle 48 million passengers and 550,000 tonnes of cargo and mail annually, further invigorating airport-related economic development.

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