Completed in 1999, the airport was the largest and most modern airport in the country until the modernization of Yangon International Airport in 2008, the airport connects 11 domestic and seven international destinations, complete with a 4267-meter runway which is the longest runway in use in Southeast Asia and capacity to handle up to 3 million passengers a year. It is the main operating base of Golden Myanmar Airlines.

The Mandalay International Airport project was first conceived by the Burmese military government in the mid 1990s as a way to increase overall levels of foreign investment and tourism in Myanmar. With Yangon boasting the only other international airport for the whole country, the new Mandalay airport was regarded as crucial in achieving a planned 10% annual passenger growth. The hope was for Mandalay to become a hub for flights to other major Asian cities, in particular Beijing, Hanoi, Bangkok, Calcutta and Dhaka.

According to wikipedia