A Sneak Peek at the World's Soon-to-Be Biggest Airport

The Beijingers | Nov 22, 2018 10:00 am | Add a comment | 2705 reads

Beijing is soon to be the proud owner of the world's biggest airport. Well, the southern suburb of Daxing, bordering Langfang in Hebei province, to be precise. The terminal with all the trimmings (AKA runways and other essential bits) is expected to be completed on Jun 30, 2019, and the airport should be open to the public in September.

One of the contractors undertaking the airport project, China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) has been showered with attention not only because of their construction achievements but also for their new-fangled smart construction practice. Besides drone surveying technology that allows scanning of large areas and video surveillance, the company also chips all of their vehicles with a GPS tracker in order to maximize efficiency and monitor the site. And there you thought WeChat was an invasive app, try taking a smoking break in one of these forklifts.

We were invited out one smoggy afternoon to take a trip to the airport, and see how CCCC is getting on. The terminal building is visible from the outside of the territory, but the gate is heavily guarded by security personnel, so we don't advise doing this on your own. [Hear that Burbex Brin? We definitely don't condone you breaking into this site. But if you do, take pics.]

After entering the site, it took us around 40 minutes to reach the main office by bus, traveling on a bumpy dirt track that has been hopelessly corrugated by truck tires. The area occupied by the airport is 700,000sqm, and rare is the worker that moves around on foot, yet this commute apparently can't be sped up with the construction of concrete roads as they would have to be covered over by runways eventually anyway. Hmmm. Anyway, the ride gave us plenty of time to contemplate the looming smog, which made the whole construction site feel gloomy and somewhat unearthly.

Approaching the main terminal building, christened The Orange Starfish (ok, maybe it's not called that yet, but we know that the netizens will mobilize and burst out with a bunch of creative nicknames any minute now), the distinctive structure started to emerge from the smog.

Dashing, it's not. But even dusty, half-finished and standing amid piles of equipment, the terminal is already an impressive structure. Even standing a few hundred meters away, the scope of the ginormous project was obvious. "Should we go in?" we asked, very sweetly. "Oh no no, not possible," the CCCC representative shook his head and smiled.

Well, it was worth a shot. For now, you'll have to content yourselves with the latest interior picture, that was published by China Daily on Aug 30. Speculating on what has changed since then is a job best left to our imaginations, as we impatiently wait for the airport to open next year.