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Beijing’s new 7-runway, star-shaped Daxing airport opened by Xi Jinping, with aviation industry ready for take-off

  • Most expensive airport in history is housed in the world’s biggest single-terminal building
  • Daxing is the first airport to have two-storey departure gates and is hailed as a major boost for China’s air travel

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The new airport, declared open on Wednesday, could form part of a new economic belt. Photo: Xinhua
Beijing’s new airport, the most expensive ever built and designed to transform air travel in China, has been formally opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Having taken five years and more than 80 billion yuan (US$11 billion) to complete, Daxing International Airport was declared open in a short announcement by Xi on Wednesday, six days before the October 1 National Day holiday.

The world’s biggest single-terminal airport building, at 7.53 million sq ft, it has a distinctive star-shaped layout and is the first airport to have two-storey departure gates, to increase capacity.

Chinese authorities hope Daxing will become one of the world’s busiest international transport hubs, eventually handling more than 100 million passengers a year and being a hub for the country’s rapidly growing civil aviation market.

Located 46km south of central Beijing, the seven-runway facility is expected to handle 72 million passengers a year by 2025, and is intended to relieve pressure on the overcrowded Beijing Capital International Airport – ranked the world’s second-busiest in 2018 by the World Airport Traffic Report.
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