Turpan Jiaohe Airport

机About this airport

Turpan Jiaohe Airport serves Turpan, one of the most geographically extreme inhabited places in China and on earth. The Turpan Depression descends to 154 metres below sea level — the third lowest land point on earth — and the summer heat is among the most intense of any settled area in China, regularly exceeding 47°C. The same combination of extreme heat and abundant groundwater from the Tianshan glaciers (channelled through the ancient karez underground irrigation system) creates exceptional conditions for growing grapes: Turpan's raisins and fresh grapes are considered the finest in China.

Routes connect primarily from Urumqi (approximately 40 minutes by air, 2.5 hours by road or 1.5 hours by high-speed rail) [VERIFY: current routes — May 2026]. Most visitors to Turpan travel by road or rail from Urumqi, making the airport a secondary option. The high-speed rail connection to Urumqi is fast, comfortable, and the recommended approach for most visitors.

Turpan's historic sites are remarkable: the Jiaohe ruins (an entire ancient Silk Road city on a mesa, abandoned in the 14th century), the Gaochang ruins (the site of a Uyghur Buddhist kingdom capital), the Karez underground water channels (still functional), the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves (cliff-side Buddhist grottoes, badly damaged in the early 20th century), and the Flaming Mountains (the red sandstone formations of the desert interior, immortalised in the 16th-century novel Journey to the West).