In an ambitious undertaking, Beijing is building a new international airport that may become the world’s biggest aviation hub when it is done.
The new airport is under construction south of the capital in Daxing district, near the border with Hebei province.
It will be completed in 2019 and run concurrently with the present airport Beijing Capital International Airport, according to a report by Bloomberg, a New York-based financial media company.
Coach services, subway and railway links will serve the new airport, connecting it with downtown Beijing and neighboring Tianjin and Hebei. The trip between airport and downtown Beijing will take 30 minutes.
“There are demands to add hundreds of flights in Beijing every day that get refused because we’re running out of resources. The city is capable of running dual hubs,” said Liu Xuesong, the general manager of Capital Airports Holding Co., the operator of Beijing’s existing airport.
The new US$12.9 billion (P652 billion) airport will have at least seven runways, and handle around 100 million passengers a year.
More than 90 million passengers passed through the BCIA in the city’s northeast last year.
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