The first commercial flights from Beijing’s new Daxing International Airport took off on Wednesday, an airport that is roughly the size of 100 football fields and is expected to become one of the world’s busiest, Reuters reports. The Chinese government has paid $17.47 billion for the project, according to the airport’s website. Shaped like a phoenix from the above, the airport was designed by famous Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid. It has four runways and is expected to handle up to 72 million passengers a year by 2025, eventually reaching 100 million.
It was honored as “a new powerful source of national development” at a ceremony overseen by President Xi Jinping, just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. A China Southern Airlines Airbus A380 flight to Guangzhou in the country’s south was the first to fly out.
China will become the world’s largest aviation market by 2022. Daxing, located south of Beijing, will help reduce pressure on Capital International Airport in the city’s northeast, which often causes flight delays. The new airport is, however, about 46 kilometers away from central Beijing, almost twice the distance of Capital airport. An express train from Daxing will take about 20 minutes to reach the south of Beijing. Daxing will also accommodate passengers from the neighboring areas of Hebei and Tianjin, linked by a network of trains, subways and public buses.
China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines will be the main domestic carriers at Daxing. About 50 foreign airlines, including British Airways and Finnair, plan to move all or part of their operations in the next few quarters. The relocation of all airlines is due to be completed by the winter of 2021. With the opening of Daxing, Beijing Nanyuan Airport, China’s oldest airport, will stop operations from Thursday.
本时文内容由奇速英语国际教育研究院原创编写，未经书面授权，禁止复制和任何商业用途，版权所有，侵权必究！（作者投稿及时文阅读定制请联系微信：400-1000-028）
13980503458
13980503458
admin@qisuen.cn
