Why is there no airport in Suzhou?

There is no airport in Suzhou, which is quite humbled. Most of Jiangsu 13 prefecture-level cities have airports. Why is there no airport in Suzhou, the first city in the province?

Ten years of airport dream, Suzhou people don't understand that a megacity with a population of 10 million actually doesn't have its own airport?

There used to be an airport road in Suzhou, which is now Jinjihu Avenue. At that time, this road led to Hongqiao Airport, so it was named Airport Road. Later, due to the construction of expressway, Suning Airport was more undertaken by Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway (G2/G42), and Airport Road lost its original name, so it was renamed Jinjihu Avenue.

It is said that Suzhou also had the intention to build its own airport at that time, but it was rejected when the project was approved. Later, Suzhou invested in Wuxi Shuofang Airport, and now the airport is renamed Sunan Airport, which also shows that the positioning of the airport has covered the southern part of Jiangsu, not just Wuxi.

Many analysts tend to think that the trunk and regional airports in the Yangtze River Delta region are already very dense, and the tight airspace resources can't give Suzhou a share, and Suzhou is not an aviation gateway like Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. However, some observers believe that this is not the main reason-there are five airports in the Pearl River Delta, namely Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai, with high density and close distance. A more realistic consideration may be that Shanghai (Hongqiao, Pudong) and Wuxi (Shuofang) have airports, and Suzhou is not too far away from the two places, so from the perspective of avoiding repeated investment, we have not built our own airport. The passenger flow in Suzhou and Wuxi can't completely "feed" Shuofang Airport. Building another airport will not only waste resources, but also "lose both sides" with the existing Sunan Shuofang Airport.