China declares formal opening of huge international airport south of Beijing
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BEIJING (REUTERS, CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK, XINHUA) - Beijing's huge new airport, Daxing International, is formally open, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday (Sept 25), ahead of the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on Oct 1.
The 450-billion-yuan (S$87 billion) project, completed in less than five years, will give a boost to infrastructure growth, flagging amid the biggest economic slowdown in decades, as China and the United States remain locked in a trade war.
The airport was hailed as "a new powerful source of national development" at a ceremony overseen by President Xi in which top government officials, including Mr He Lifeng, the head of the state planner and Vice-Premier Han Zheng, participated.
The phoenix-shaped airport, abbreviated PKX, is located in Beijing's south, and will help ease pressure on the existing Capital International Airport in the capital's northeast, where capacity constraints often cause flight delays.
Designed by the Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, the new airport boasts four runaways and is expected to handle up to 72 million passengers a year by 2025, eventually reaching 100 million.
China aims to build Daxing, which is expected to become one of the world's busiest airports, into a global aviation hub, as the country is forecast to overtake the United States as the world's largest aviation market by 2022.
Rising out of farmland, Daxing airport is about 46km away from Tiananmen Square, almost twice the distance from the Capital airport to central Beijing.
It will also accommodate passengers from the neighbouring areas of Hebei and Tianjin, linked by a sprawling network of high-speed and inter-city trains, metros and public buses.
An express train from the airport will take about 20 minutes to reach the south of Beijing.
China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines are the main airlines at Daxing, while about 50 foreign airlines, including British Airways and Finnair, plan to move all or part of their operations in the next few quarters.
Flag carrier Air China won 10 per cent of the capacity at Daxing.
Against an initial plan for China Southern and China Eastern to move all operations to the new airport, with each getting 40 per cent of its capacity, China Eastern has retained its highly profitable Beijing-Shanghai route out of the old airport.
The relocation of all airlines is to be completed by the winter of 2021.
President Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the operation ceremony of the airport on Wednesday morning.
Manager of the airport's operations department Qian Yuanyuan said that a China Southern Airbus A380, a China Eastern Airbus A350-900, and an Air China Boeing B747-8 will be the first passenger departures from the new airport on Wednesday.
According to flight app Umetrip, the flights operated by China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines will take off at 3.45pm, flying to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport, respectively.
The Air China flight will leave for Chengdu 15 minutes later.
The first passengers to arrive at the new airport on Wednesday will be from one flight each from China United Airlines, Capital Airlines, and Hebei Airlines.
