Daxing Airport Opens as Beijing Grapples With Rapidly Growing Air Traffic

Beijing’s enormous Daxing International Airport opened for business on Wednesday, the first flight spreading its wings for Guangzhou with China’s top flyers in the cockpit.

The seven flights that left in that initial hour were just the first step toward easing the burden on the second busiest airport in the world. For nigh on a decade, Beijing Capital Airport has been trailing Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for the first-place position since it surpassed London Heathrow for second place in 2010, but it will likely never grab that title now that Daxing has opened.

Still, airport traffic in Beijing is some of the most rapidly growing in the world. Annual traffic growth in Beijing has hovered around 5 percent for the past nine years, compared to around 3 percent growth in Atlanta, which would have put Beijing Capital on track for the number one position in just four years. However, with Capital Airport expanding every year in order to cope with the growth, Beijing recognized that there simply wasn’t enough room for expansions to meet projected growth, and thus Daxing Airport was born.

Slowly but surely, traffic will be transferred from Capital to Daxing, with plans to have the two hubs handling near equal amounts of traffic by 2025. Daxing will mostly be sending out domestic flights at first, but its international routes are already growing faster than expected. The city has been preparing accordingly, building a formidable Airport Express line that even includes a business class option, which is more than we can say for the line to Capital Airport.

Beijing isn’t the only Chinese city to see booming airport traffic, and in fact, Daxing is just one of 216 new airports expected to open in the country by 2035, putting the grand total of civil airports in China at 450. Unlike some Chinese construction projects, this is not excess for excess’ sake: traffic between the US and China alone will likely grow near exponentially over the next few years.

As for Daxing Airport, it shouldn’t have any trouble holding the millions of passengers that will soon be passing through its terminals, which are, after all, the largest in the world at present. At the cost of USD 11 billion, the star-shaped airport covers more than 1,000,000 square meters, complete with a garden in each leg of the star where passengers can lounge and enjoy ponds and wooden pavilions. The airport was designed by award-winning Iraqi architect, Zaha Hadid, who passed away in 2016, leaving the airport and several other projects around the world to be completed posthumously.

READ: Explore Beijing's Stunning Daxing Airport With This Virtual Tour

Images: Simpleflying, China Daily, CNA, Asia Times