The Beijing Daxing International Airport is expected to start operating in 2019.

Located on the border of Beijing and Langfang, Hebei Province, the new airport, which will be Beijing's second international airport and is positioned to be a large international hub, is now undergoing interior decoration, according to Zhang Xiaofeng, deputy manager of the terminal construction department. He said the decoration will be completed by the end of this year.

The project, which costs 80 billion yuan (11.5 billion US dollars), is 46 kilometers from Tian'anmen Square, 26 km from downtown Langfang in Hebei, 55 km from Xiongan New Area, and 67 km from the existing Beijing Capital International Airport, and is expected to serve as the airport hub for North China.

With four runways and a 700,000-square-meter terminal area, the airport is expected to be the world's largest airport upon completion.

The first phase of the airport project is designed for a target of 72 million passengers, 20 million metric tonnes of cargo and mail, and 620,000 aircraft movements in 2025, with plans to handle 100 million passengers in the long term.

Nine passenger airline companies will be settled in the new airport. These airline companies are China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines, China United Airlines, Hebei Airlines, Spring Airlines, Okay Airways, Juneyao Airlines and Donghai Airlines. In addition, one cargo airline company, China Postal Airlines, will also be assigned to this airport.

"We have adopted natural light in the terminal design as much as possible and lots of technological innovation in the construction of the integrated transportation," said Zhang Ru, representative of the project headquarters.

She said the project includes five vertical and two horizontal integrated transportation networks, which will combine highway, intercity railway, high-speed railway and subways with the airport as the center.

Combined with the construction of the Daxing airport, China has planned an airport economic zone. In the future, the country's international communication center area, aviation technology innovation leading area, coordinated development demonstration area of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei will be formed with the Daxing airport at its core.