China Is Building A Multibillion Dollar Airport – To Over Take US

Posted by: lukwago J in Travel December 7, 2018

Beijing, China — China is assured to overtake the US as the world’s biggest air travel market by 2022 — and its little wonder the country’s airport construction craze shows no signs of abating.

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The government has plans to build or expand 74 airports nationwide by the end of 2020, aiming to accommodate a whopping 720 million passengers a year.

No project is attracting more attention than Beijing Daxing International Airport, the Chinese capital’s new multibillion-dollar aviation hub slated to open in September 2019.

Beijing is in desperate need of a second global gateway. The existing Capital International Airport is hitting full capacity, making it nearly impossible for airlines to add flights at desirable times.

More than 95 million passengers passed through the three terminals of Beijing Capital, the world’s second busiest airport behind onlyHartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.

The new Daxing airport, designed by the late architect Zaha Hadidand her Chinese partners, is built for the future, boasting four runways and a terminal the size of 97 soccer pitches upon opening of the first phase.

The “modest” initial operational target is to accommodate 72 million passengers and two million tons of cargo annually by 2025.

The ambitious master plan calls for the building of a total of seven runways, and moving at least 100 million passengers and four million tons of cargo a year through the airport.

Construction for the $11.5 billion project began in 2014, with more than 40,000 workers currently on site. The nearly completed terminal bears all the hallmarks of Hadid’s signature contour lines, with plenty of natural light shining through rooftop windows.

Nicknamed “starfish” by Chinese media for its shape of five concourses connected to a main hall, Daxing aims to reduce walking for passengers, long a complaint against many new mega-hubs.

The airport authority has promised a distance of no more than 600 meters between security checkpoints and the remotest gates.

Another passenger concern is Daxing’s location: in the far south of Beijing, a city notorious for traffic jams. The new airport is some 50 kilometers from Tiananmen Square in the city center — and even farther away from the main business districts in the east and north.

Source: CNN

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