Beijing Daxing International Airport to start operation this year

By Bai Yang, People’s Daily

Beijing Daxing International Airport is expected to be completed on June 30 this year and put into use before September 30, said Feng Zhenglin, director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

Zheng made the statement during an interview after the opening meeting of the second session of the 13^th National People’s Congress. The construction of the airport’s main body has been completed, while the internal furnishing as well as equipment installation and testing are underway.

10 of the 32 international airlines newly approved by the CAAC are from this new mega-airport, including the popular routes to Russia’s St. Petersburg, South Korea’s Busan, and Egypt’s Cairo, according to a statement issued by the organization this month.

“The new airport is expected to handle 45 million passengers annually by 2022 and 72 million by 2025,” Feng introduced.

The CAAC head further added that with a vision of building a “safe, green, intelligent and humanistic” airport, the new aviation hub was constructed according to the standards for major modern international airports.

The airport, designed to become the world’s largest, has a long-term plan to expand annual passenger capacity to 100 million.

Li Jianhua, project manager of the main terminal construction, said that he and his team completed the world’s most complicated and the largest mechanical and electrical installation last year.

They installed 247,000 sets of electromechanical devices, 1,800 kilometers of cables and wires, millions of connectors, and air hoses covering a total area of nearly 73 standard football pitches, to the core zone of the world’s largest single terminal.

During the peak of construction, more than 8,000 workers were working simultaneously at the main terminal in a day, Li introduced.

The main terminal of the airport has a huge steel-framed roof that covers 180,000 square meters, the largest of its kind in the world. It is incredible that it only took 80 days for the constructors to install such a big ceiling with the help of robotic measurement. The error procession was limited within one millimeter, which is nothing but a miracle.

According to Li, the internal furnishing is expected to be finished by April 30, and the fire control acceptance check is scheduled in May. The final construction acceptance would begin in mid-June, he said.

“We aim to build a world-class project, and that’s why we must stay committed to excellence,” he added.

An integrated transportation network has been planned together with the new airport, including seven transportation projects of expressway, inter-city rail transit, high-speed rail and subway. The new airport will be connected to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei by rail transit.

Besides, the new airport is expected to relieve the pressure of the Beijing Capital International Airport that rose as the world’s second busiest airport in 2018, only after the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport of the US.

Aerial view of Daxing International Airport (Photo by CFP)