Beijing on track to open their new $13.8 Billion Dollar Airport in Daxing by September 2019. Will this become the worlds busiest airport at 100+ Million Passengers per year?
Beijing Capital International currently handles 95 million Passengers per year as shown by the recent statistics in 2017, at nearly 15 million over capacity this airport is struggling to keep up with the demand. Even with all 3 runways in use it’s still not enough to keep the airport running smoothly with an estimated 1660 aircraft movements per day! This is the current Airport…
With this being the main hub for Air China they sometimes have to utilise the Beijing Nanyuan Military airport for passenger aircraft such as ‘China United Airlines’ which is located at the opposite end of the city.
Beijing Capital International currently holds the record for second largest airport terminal in the world, as well as the sixth largest building in the world. It is also the worlds second busiest airport in terms of aircraft movements and with no room to expand they have decided to build Beijing Daxing International Airport.
With 4 runways, 3 of which are 3.8Km in length is set to handle 45 million Passengers in it’s first year with plans to expand this to 100 million in a 3-phase program. So far 9 passenger and 1 cargo airline have signed agreements to add this new airport to their list of destinations and in some cases dropping the old agreement with Beijing Capital International.
One of the Airlines set to use the new airport are Air France, whereas Star Alliance believe they should keep the current slots with Beijing Capital International and hope to expand the number of flights when other airlines move to the new airport.
When the new airport is operational, all civilian aircraft currently flying to Nanyuan Airport will now fly to Beijing Daxing International, which will be a welcome change for passengers as they upgrade to this state of the art airport conveniently linked with high-speed rail and a metro system.
The initial plans called for 7 runways one of which was for military use, however the revised plans only show 4 runways for commercial aviation use. With plans to reach 100+ million passengers Beijing Daxing International could take the pole position as the worlds busiest airport ahead of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport who managed 103,902,992 passengers last year.
©Travoh
©China-Underground
