Beijing airport upgrades and new facility

from today's Business Week Asia Insider (3/10):

China February 29, 2008, 7:15AM EST text size: TT

Beijing Airport: $3.75 Billion for Smoother Skies
Even before the Olympics came to Beijing, mainland airports were congested and inefficient. A new terminal and regulation may help
by Chi-Chu Tschang

"This summer, an estimated 6.4 million people are expected to arrive in Beijing for the Olympic Games. The Chinese government has spent the last several years investing in airport expansion, restricting flights, and negotiating with the military to ensure tourists will not start their trip with flight delays and cancellations.

But it hasn't been an easy task. Beijing Capital International Airport has been bursting at the seams, barely able to keep up with the explosion of air travel in China since the airline industry was deregulated in the 1980s. To win market share in China's fiercely competitive aviation industry (BusinessWeek.com 1/15/08), airlines have been overbooking flights to Beijing and Shanghai's congested airports, which has resulted in flight delays and cancellations. Last year, 86% of the flights into and out of Beijing's airport took off on time, putting it only in the middle of the pack compared with other major international airports, according to the airport.

Beijing is now unveiling what it hopes will be a multibillion-dollar solution to the problem. At midnight Feb. 29, Capital Airport's ultramodern Terminal 3 (BusinessWeek.com 2/27/08) officially opened for business, six months ahead of the 2008 Olympics. Construction on the $3.75 billion terminal, designed by British architect Norman Foster to evoke a red, orange, and yellow dragon, took a lightning-quick three years and nine months.

Second Airport in the Works

The world's largest airport terminal is one of a host of projects, including stadiums and office towers, Beijing has built for the Olympics to show off China's economic prowess. "Even if Beijing were not hosting the Olympics, our airport would still need to expand because we've had to restrict a lot of flights, and not just in the last year or two," says Zhang Zhizhong, president of Capital Airports Holding Company, parent company of the Beijing airport.

Although the original designs of the airport's Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 called for a maximum capacity of 35 million passengers per year, in 2007 they handled more than 53 million passengers, making Beijing's airport the ninth-busiest in the world. China's air traffic grew 16% last year as more businessmen flew to China to trade, and increasingly wealthier Chinese took flights for visits or vacations. Analysts say China's aviation industry could have grown even faster if it the infrastructure constraints had not caused bottlenecks. Terminal 3 will alleviate the problem by doubling Beijing airport's existing capacity to 76 million passengers per year." ....

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