Why China Needs More Airports Like Beijing Daxing

The Chinese aviation industry is already one of the busiest in the world and it is growing fast. Currently, China has around 235 airports across the entire country. However, China is hoping to grow this number to as many as 450 by the year 2035. Why, you ask, does China need over 200 new airports? Well, the expected growth of passengers and flights has been dramatically increasing. Just over a decade ago in 2007, passengers in China made 184 million journeys. Nearly a decade later, this number has jumped to 550 million. The International Air Transport Association even predicts that China will surpass America as the world's largest airline market in the next three to five years. And for comparison's sake, the United States, with its passenger volume, has roughly 5,000 public airports compared to the just 235 today in China. Both Boeing and Airbus, the world's two largest manufacturers of passenger aircraft, are forecasting that Chinese carriers will buy more aircraft than American ones in the very near future. As a result, the Chinese government has launched an airport building program to renovate and innovate existing facilities while building many new airports as well. One major step China has taken towards this goal is the opening of the brand new Beijing Dashing International Airport this past September. China is well known for building massive structures, and it is obviously home to the Great Wall of China, the world's largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges Dam, and the world's largest building in terms of floor space, the New Century Global Center. So it should come as no surprise that China has now opened the world's largest airport in terms of terminal size. But why did China open a completely brand new airport when Beijing Capital International Airport is located just 45 kilometers away? Like most large cities, Beijing needs additional airports to offload the stress of large passenger volume. This is not uncommon for large cities to do. New York, for example, has three major airports to include JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. And London has six, which obviously includes London Heathrow, but also Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, London City, and Southend. So it is certainly not unlike a city to do this, and as the Chinese population's demand for flying increases, they will certainly need more airports to handle the capacity. Dashing covers an area of over 700,000 square meters, which is the equivalent of nearly 98 football fields. This is also double the size of London Heathrow's four entire terminals combined. Although it currently has just four runways, plans are in the works for a total of seven runways once fully built, and it will ultimately handle up to 100 million passengers per year and compete with the Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the world's busiest airport. Building an airport to handle such a large capacity is not straightforward, and as a result, the designers had to find a way to bring all the facilities under one roof and enable close proximity amongst its services. The resulting airport, designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, is a four-floor complex with an underground structure that will eventually link to a satellite building to further increase capacity. For the large part, most airports are built with a linear or pier design in mind. A linearly designed airport maintains aircraft parked at the gates that are immediately adjacent to the terminal itself, where a pier-designed airport makes use of several piers to maximize space for parked aircraft. The limiting factor here being that this typically requires long building dimensions and can mean long walking distances and other complications related to building operation. Unlike these typical designs, Dashing resembles what many are calling a starfish. This starfish has five separate piers that are each no more than 600 meters in length or roughly an eight-minute walk from center to end. By placing ticketing and security at the center of the airport, no one passenger is more than eight minutes away from their gate, even in a worst-case scenario. This enables the airport to minimize the distance between initial check-in and any one gate, as well as minimize distance between any two gates in the instance of a connection. Additionally, the starfish design allows for the single terminal to hold a total of 79 aircraft throughout. Dashing will also come with the world's first double-deck departure and arrival levels in order to speed the process for check-in and security. The top level will have traditional facilities for the international and domestic flights, while the one below will be dedicated to frequent flyers who are primarily traveling domestically. The airport also prides itself on being one of the most technologically advanced in the world. This means that from the moment you step into the airport, ultra-fast 5G mobile services, advanced facial recognition for check-in, and smart robots are roaming around ready to help at any time. Along with these technological features comes many environmentally sustainable features as well, such as the 100% rainwater collection facility capable of the collection, storing, permeation, and purification of up to 2.8 million cubic meters of rainwater. Additionally, the airport's roof is installed with photovoltaic modules, enabling the airport to generate at least 10 megawatts of solar power. In the long run, Dashing Airport will be able to accommodate something like 620,000 flights per year and well over 100 million passengers. This will likely take traffic away from other Asian hubs in the region, such as the current Beijing International Airport, Dubai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. While dashing is a major step forward for the Chinese airline industry, the big question is where to place all of the new airports that China needs as well. It is likely that most of the 200 new airports will be located in four main areas. This makes sense as these are the most populous regions of China and thus have a demand for more passengers. New airports will also likely be built out west as the Chinese government has a very clear development strategy to promote the development of these more rural areas. As it stands now, these regions only have a handful of airports. Apart from this, China also has work to do with respect to managing its skies. Of the world's 100 busiest airports, the seven that suffer the longest delays are all in China. Most of this is due to the extreme risk-averse policy towards takeoff and landing intervals. At most of the large airports around the world, the intervals between flights, whether taking off or landing, has been compressed to just 30 seconds. In China, however, this often runs as long as two full minutes. Still, there are other problems related to the People's Liberation Army and its policy of rigid control of the Chinese airspace. The Chinese Air Force, or People's Liberation Army Air Force, controls roughly 75% of the Chinese skies and regularly overrules commercial aviation. By solving these two problems alone, China can increase utilization of their current airports, which will greatly benefit the airline industry. Although the customer base is growing, airlines will need more and more airports just like Daxing in order to continue growing and they will certainly need to make use of these airports in a much more efficient manner. Let me know in the comments below what your thoughts are on the Chinese aviation industry and perhaps if you have plans to visit Daxing anytime soon. It certainly does look like a remarkable airport and I do hope one day that I can visit too. And as always, thank you so much for watching this video.