June 2026

Taiwan's largest and busiest airport, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, has finally finished construction on its third terminal. Host to some 48,000,000 passengers (making it the 36th busiest passenger airport) and 2.2 million tons of cargo (making it the ninth busiest cargo airport) in 2019, Taoyuan has been sitting around maximum capacity for almost a decade at this point, struggling to find space to service the number of passengers and high-value cargo traveling through the airport annually.

Hoping to relieve this congestion, the government of Taiwan began planning to expand the airport back in 2012 before finally announcing the construction plan in 2015. Set to open by 2021, the terminal's opening date was eventually pushed back to 2023 in 2018 due to mismanagement by the construction firm, before being pushed back once again to 2025 in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even this deadline could not be met, though it did not fall terribly behind schedule, opening in 2026 instead.

The newly-finished Terminal 3, with its distinctive cloud-shaped roof, is easily the largest terminal at the airport, capable of handling up to 45 million passengers per year, bringing the total capacity of the airport up to about 90 million annual passengers. The terminal is connected to the other two terminals and the greater Taoyuan/Taipei transit system through the Taoyuan Airport MRT.

The expansion of Taoyuan International Airport through the opening of Terminal 3 and an accompanying third runway are the centerpiece of a larger urban planning development in the city, the Taoyuan Aerotropolis. Centered around the airport, this development includes new districts for transportation, logistics, industry, and residential developments, with the goal of attracting international investment and businesses through lower corporate tax rates and a convenient location next to the country's largest international airport. The government estimates that, as the Aerotropolis develops, it will create some 200,000-300,000 jobs, handle some 4.5 million tons of container cargo, and generate annual revenues of up roughly 75 billion USD per year.

Though Taoyuan's expansion just finished, some analysts are already claiming that the expansion will be insufficient to meet Taiwan's needs in the near future, as the increased business brought by the relocation of major American firms like Google, Apple, and Microsoft to Taiwan from the Mainland will increase demand for air travel. This is particularly true of southern Taiwan (several of these new businesses, like Apple and Microsoft, are focusing on Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan rather than the traditional economic engine of Taipei), as the main airport in the region, Kaohsiung International Airport, is too small to meet the increased demand.

Following these reports, President Lai's and the Mayor of Kaohsiung jointly announced plans to replicate the success of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project by in southern Taiwan by expanding Kaohsiung International Airport. Under the proposed expansion plan, which is slated to be finished in 2029, Kaohsiung International will open a third terminal and a second runway, increasing its annual passenger capacity up to 25 million (from its current ~8 million) and its cargo capacity to 250,000 tons (from its current ~75 thousand). The proposed investment, which will include a new set of urban planning districts around the airport to attract new business, residential, and industrial investments, is hoped to help revitalize the area around Kaohsiung Airport, which has been struggling since the opening of the Taiwan HSR network cannabilized the domestic air travel that used to make up the bulk of the airport's passenger traffic.

Finally, President Lai's administration also announced that it would be financing service expansions at Kinmen Airport and Penghu Airport to allow the airports to service international flights. These expansions are expected to be cheap and easy, wrapping up in mid- to late- 2027, and are not expected to dramatically shift the composition of flights to either airport. For now, at least. Some anticipate that these expansions are part of larger government programs to rebrand these two locations as international tourist destinations, pointing to the past referendums that allowed both counties to open and operate casinos, but so far, the government hasn't announced anything specific.