Beijing's new int'l airport to become key transport node

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02:10

China is building a new international airport for Beijing in the south of the capital. This facility is expected to ease the burden of Beijing’s current international airport, as well as to boost the transportation and economic development in the southern part of the city.

It will be a model of China’s modern engineering practices. The first stage of Beijng’s new international airport will have four tracks for planes as large as the Airbus A380. The steel structure of the terminal will cover an area the size of 44 football fields. Certainly, great challenges for the engineers are involved.

"We assemble the steel structure on the ground, before lifting it up using hydraulic power," said Liu Bin, engineer from Beijing Construction Engineering Group, also director of Quality Department of New Airport Project, "the biggest structure is over 10,000 square meters in size, and weighs 1,000 tons."

The airport will expect some 72 million travelers a year after being put into use. And numerous transport options being available here mean it will take less than half an hour to travel to Beijing's city center.

The biggest challenge for engineers is that there are five kinds of tracks for different transport systems overlapping here. There are tracks for subway and intercity trains. The high-speed trains will pass the airport in underground tunnels at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour, which means high standards required for both the construction process and the eventual transfer stage.

The terminal’s shape resembles that of a palm, with a central hall and five lounge corridors. After passengers pass the security checks, it's only 600 meters from the center of the main hall to the farthest boarding gate.

Illustrations of Beijing's new international airport in daytime and at night. /Photo via Beijing Construction Engineering Group

According to Guo Shuangchao, project manager of the five lounge corridors, from the center of the terminal, “you could walk to any boarding gate within eight minutes.”

At the tip of each lounge, there will be a garden accessible to travelers. The airport will become a model project for transportation in the integrated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province. The new airport is scheduled to be in operation by the end of 2019.