Beijing's Second Airport Gets Green Light
A second airport is to built in the Chinese capital Beijing. The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) said on Wednesday that the new airport will open in 2015.
The location of the airport has not yet been decided. Yang Guoping - deputy minister of the CAAC - commenting that choosing the location "is a very complicated matter" owing to the fact that issues regarding distribution of airspace and regional economic development need to be considered.
However, despite being undecided on the precise location, the CAAC is fully committed to creating a second international airport at Beijing in order to cope with the rocketing growth of air travel in China - an issue we reported on earlier this week on Airport International.
New Beijing Airport Needed to Cope with Capacity
The CAAC says that if the airport is not built then the current Beijing airport will stuggle to cope in the future, even despite the expansion work taking place there (a third runway and a third terminal).
Already handling 50 million passengers, the existing facility is estimated to handle nearly 80 million by the end of the next decade.
Officials say they need to act now if Beijing isn't to have problems coping with the apparently insatiable demand for air travel in the country.
Reports in China suggest that even though CAAC has not declared any precise location for the new airport, the site of the development could be to the south of the city near the Yongding River. Officials in neighbouring Heibei Province and Tianjin Municipality have also put forward their areas as possible alternative locations.
The CAAC said they are currently studying several cities around the world which have two or more airports, including Shangai and New York, to help them with their decision to site the airport.
Source - Airport International's Far East Correspondent
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