When China’s new Beijing airport opens in 2015 it will be the largest in the world, covering 21 square miles, with nine runways and the capacity to handle 370,000 passengers per day. Construction is expected to begin soon on a site about 30 miles southwest of the capital city in Daxing, according to the Guardian. The new runways will provide relief for the city’s main airport, which is nearing its capacity of 75 million passengers per year. “Last year it handled 73 million,” Cao Yunchun, a professor at the country’s Civil Aviation University, told the London Telegraph. “In two years, it will be totally packed. And it cannot be expanded infinitely.”
With the new airport, Beijing is expected to handle a total of 120 million to 200 million passengers per year, which would make it the world’s busiest aviation hub. About 100 million travelers use the airports in London and Tokyo each year, most of them on international flights. Daxing also will have the most runways, beating out Denver, which has just six. Workers now on site are building a 30-foot-tall map of the world out of steel and concrete, topped by red characters announcing: “Construction of a New Airport City for the Capital.” Work on runways and facilities is expected to begin sometime this year.
