After almost five years of construction, the Beijing Daxing International Airport, expected to be one of the world’s busiest air traffic hubs, officially opened on September 25.
Chinese President Xi Jinping made the official announcement and attended the launching ceremony for the airport on Wednesday morning. The brand-new airport opened to maiden flights in the afternoon.
It will operate 116 routes connecting to 112 destinations globally around the end of this year, according to Xinhua News.
Located 46 kilometers south to downtown Beijing, the mega airport, with a reported project cost of US$11.7 billion, is the world’s largest single-terminal airport at 700,000 square meters—the size of 98 soccer fields.
It has a passenger throughput that is expected to reach 72 million passengers by 2025 and a cargo throughput projected to be at 2 million by then, with 620,000 takeoffs and landings, reported Xinhua News.
The airport opened a few days earlier than scheduled. Project construction began in 2014 and it was completed as scheduled on June 30 this year. The hub opened five days ahead of its earlier announced opening of September 30.
In the afternoon of September 25, the first maiden flight was served by a China Southern Airlines aircraft, which flew between Beijing and Guangzhou in south China. Following it, six other Chinese airlines started their respective first flights via the new airport. Flights for the public began the following day.
The new airport emerges as a pivotal air traffic hub for international travel to and from China as the country is poised to become the world’s largest civil aviation market around the mid-2020s.
The terminal building was designed by British architects Zaha Hadid Architects and French planners ADPI, and executed by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design.
The new aviation hub is shaped like a phoenix spreading its wings. It only takes a passenger eight minutes to walk from the center of the terminal building to the farthest departure gate.
According to the Daxing airport authority, 66 airlines have applied to operate at the airport. Among them, 20 are domestic airlines and 46 are overseas ones.
The Daxing airport replaces Beijing Capital International Airport as the main airport of Beijing, and is expected to take pressure off the capital airport. The capital airport, which has three terminals, recorded a passenger throughput of over 100 million in 2018, already surpassing its maximum passenger-handling capacity.
Starting from a metro station in the third southern ring road of Beijing, a passenger can reach the new airport’s terminal building in 19 minutes, thanks to the Beijing municipal government’s investment in supporting facilities for the airport.
Three urban rail lines and several expressways will connect the 5G-covered airport terminal with the city center, Xiongan New Area, and Beijing’s surrounding areas.
Photo By N509FZ
