A new airport serving Beijing should be completed by October 2017, according to China Daily:
The new airport, which is likely to be approved within the year, will probably have eight runways for civilian use and a ninth for military use, Yao Weihui, general manager of China United Airlines, said at a ceremony marking the delivery of the airline’s 10th Boeing plane on Monday ….
“The suggested location (for the new airport) in Daxing district is a place with few residents and buildings, so many runways can be built,” Wang said, adding the Beijing Capital International Airport in the northeast cannot have a fourth runway because of its location.
There has been a plan to build a second airport in the city for years. The new airport will shoulder part of the traffic pressure faced by Beijing Capital International Airport, which is now the world’s second largest in terms of passenger traffic [behind Atlanta].
Last year, the Beijing Capital International Airport handled 73.9 million passengers, close to its planned capacity of 76 million passengers by 2015.
The likely high traffic of the new airport—up to 60 million passengers a year once it is complete—will truly set it apart: according to the Financial Times, “around three quarters of China’s 175 gleaming airports are losing money, many are barely used and some don’t have any flights at all.“
