China to build world's biggest airport
14 Sep 2011
Beijing: In the race to possess the world's biggest and the largest China is set to add another statistic to its name as it announces plans to construct a new mega-airport with as many as nine runways. The construction would cement China's position as the world's biggest aviation hub.
The honour would devolve on Beijing Daxing International airport, a structure designed by Sir Norman Foster.
Bigger than all of Heathrow's five terminals combined, the structure is slated to handle around 370,000 passengers a day.
The new facility will not only serve Beijing, but also Tianjin and parts of Hebei.
The location has been pinpointed as a site 21 square miles south of the city, in the suburb of Daxing.
Presently around an hour's drive from the city centre, Beijing's planners will extend the metro line to the location and perhaps even add a high-speed train line, the paper said.
The airport will be Beijing's third, after Capital and the smaller, primarily military, Nanyuan airport.
Yao Weihui, the general manager of China United Airlines, was quoted as saying that Beijing Daxing would have eight runways for civilian use and a ninth for military use.
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