Pudong Airport moved up two notches to the sixth spot from a year before on the list issued by the Airports Council International in early March, Eastday.com reported today.

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The airport loaded 2,159,321 tons of freight and mail in 2006, a jump of 16.3 percent from a year before.

"The Pudong airport ranked No. 3 in Asia in terms of freight and mail volume," Su Weiwei, a Shanghai Airport official, said in a previous report.

Almost 90 percent of the total cargo was flying to or from a foreign country or region, growing by 31.7 percent from 2005.

Express delivery giants United Parcel Service Inc and DHL have signed agreements with Shanghai airport to build global and north Asia hubs at the Pudong airfield to further boost the freight volume.

Domestic freight hit 321,600 tons for the first time last year since the airport was put into use in the 1990s.

The United State's Memphis Airport ranked No. 1 on the total cargo list, followed by the Hong Kong International Airport and the airports in United States' Anchorage, South Korea's Seoul and Japan's Tokyo.

A 19.7-billion-yuan (US$2.5 billion) second phase project at Pudong airport, which includes a second terminal and a third runway, is expected to be completed in 2007 and put into use before the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

The expansion will give the airport the capacity to handle 60 million passengers and 4.2 million tons of cargo in 2008.

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