The dazzling new Beijing airport
This is the Beijing Capital International Airport. It is the world’s largest airport building and the centerpiece of China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure boom and provides a glimpse into China’s vision of 21st-century air travel. The futuristic airport has been built in preparation for the millions who are likely to visit China for the Olympic Games and to meet the country’s booming air traffic.An airport employee cleans the floor at the new terminal building Terminal Three — T3 — at the Beijing Capital International Airport. This is the world’s largest terminal.The roof of the swanky new terminal looks like a dragon from the air with its wing spread running 3.25 km. The giant dragon-shaped terminal is 100 hectares in size: that is as big as 170 soccer fields. This makes the airport larger than the Pentagon and almost 20 per cent bigger than all five terminals of London’s Heathrow put together.The terminal has walls of glass. The skylights of the terminal building are designed to look like scales on a dragon’s back and to let natural light into the building. The dragon is considered a sign of strength and luck in China.Almost 50,000 workers toiled round the clock in 8-hour shifts and built the colossal $3.75-billion terminal in only four years. China wanted the airport to be ready before August 8, when the Beijing Olympic Games begin.
The airport was designed by British architect Norman Foster, who has also designed Hong Kong’s famous Chep Lap Kok airport. British firm Arup, which has provided engineering and architectural design services for the Hyderabad International Airport, built the airport. The new terminal will have a capacity of 75 million passengers a year. It features an extremely high-tech passenger baggage system — on 50 km of conveyor belts — that can handle 19,800 bags per hour.
The terminal has a 3-km long concourse, divided into three sections and connected by a shuttle train. The airport’s shuttle train service can ferry passengers around the mammoth airport. According to Norman Foster, the airport’s architect, the airport is ’so big that under a certain amount of light you can’t see one end of the building from the other.’ Apart from the shuttle, a high-speed commuter train (subway as also elevated) service will carry passengers between the airport and Beijing in 15 minutes. Two Airport Lines, scheduled to open before July, on elevated lines connect the airport with the transport hub of Dongzhimen. The Olympic branch line has four stations, each with a theme. The airport’s runway is capable of handling the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380. The airport building has integrated environmental control systems to minimise energy consumption and carbon emissions, report say. The airlines that will use airport initially include Air China, Sichuan Airlines, Shandong Airlines, Hong Kong’s Dragonair, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Qatar Airways, Qantas Airways, El Al Israel Airlines, Emirates and other Star Alliance members. |
However, the construction of the airport involved the demolition of thousands of houses that rendered more than 10,000 Chinese peasants homeless. China’s autocratic Communist regime could thus manage to do something that democratic governments — like India’s — can hardly ever match.
The size of the new Beijing airport can be gauged from the fact that it boasts of 64 restaurants, 80 retail stores, 175 escalators, 173 lifts, 437 travelators or moving footpaths, and 300 check-in counters.