Super Star

But unlike elsewhere, evicting an estimated 20,000 people to make way for the facility was no problem for China given the State owns all land. Where the displaced are now is unknown, but what is certain is that Beijing’s second airport at Daxing is up and running.

Full runway testing began In May when an Air China Boeing B747-8, a China Southern Airlines (CSA) Airbus A380 and a China Eastern Airlines (CEA) Airbus A350 landed at the airport. Construction was declared complete in July and by the official start of operations at the end of September a total of 787 tests had been carried out involving 500 flights and 52,000 simulated passenger trips.

Some 46 km south of Beijing, the terminal building at Daxing is the world’s second largest after Istanbul Airport, with an area of more than 1,000,000 square metres. Currently boasting 79 aircraft stands, it will eventually be expanded to seven runways with an additional terminal. Passenger throughput is forecast to reach 45 million by 2021, 72 million in 2025 and 100 million by 2040. In addition to passengers, the airport is also expected to support 20 million tonnes of cargo and mail on a yearly basis.

The world’s second largest terminal building after Istanbul

There is no question Daxing was desperately required. Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA), in the northeast of the city, is the second busiest airport in the world. It handled more than it was designed for – 101 million passengers – last year but according to Chinese government’s estimates passenger volume in Beijing could reach 170 million by 2025, meaning that the already overcrowded airport couldn’t meet the huge future air traffic demand. The future for Daxing, say officials, is for it to become the new aviation gateway of northern China with designs on poaching passengers and cargo from predominant Asian hubs such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai.

Yet while Daxing is a remarkable achievement, China’s authorities continue to face serious issues the new airport will not resolve.

Set to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest air travel market within the next three years, the country’s hunger for flying is growing exponentially. According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), last year Chinese airports handled 1.264 billion passengers, up 10.2 per cent over 2017, with 37 of the country’s airports handling more than 10 million passengers a year. Striving to meet the challenge, Beijing has embarked on an unprecedented airport building program, of which Daxing is only one piece of the jigsaw. Billions more dollars are being poured into runways and terminals across the nation.

To put some perspective on what confronts authorities when it comes to airport infrastructure needs, China currently has around 235 airports and many are already congested, particularly the primary hubs at Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Flight delays an issue in China

Government officials estimate around 450 airports will be needed across the country by 2035 and building airports isn’t the only problem. Roughly 70 per cent of the country’s airspace is still controlled by the military compared with 20 per cent in the US. It means lack of flying space for commercial aircraft, restrictions on options for departure and arrival routing in good or bad weather, and reduction in the number of takeoffs and landings that airports can handle.

Thus, while new runways allow increased takeoffs and landings, they don’t solve the problem of the limited air corridors that are available.

There is already plenty of evidence pointing to the impact of that. CAAC figures show that last year flight delays increased by 50 per cent, with only 71 per cent of flights taking off on time. One academic, Professor Li Xiaojin from the Civil Aviation University of China, told China Daily that by the university’s calculations: “If the Air Force transfers just 10 per cent of the airspace under its control to civil airlines, an extra US$32.6 billion will be generated in GDP.”

There are, however, no plans at this time to increase commercial airspace.

What Daxing is doing is ushering in a significant shift in Chinese aviation policy. Beijing is the blueprint for a relaxation of China’s “one airline, one route” policy. Under this, the country’s major carriers were confined to operating from their base cities to major international destinations. In other words, Beijing-based Air China had exclusive rights to fly from the capital to Paris, London and elsewhere. Shanghai-based China Eastern and Guangzhou-based China Southern could not fly from Beijing on these routes, only from their home cities.

For example, when CSA, the only Chinese carrier operating the Airbus A380, wanted to launch Beijing-Paris services with the aircraft some years ago it was denied the rights.

The “one airline, one route” policy has also been somewhat detrimental to Chinese operators. For example, on the Los Angeles-Shanghai route all three major US airlines fly between the cities but there is only one Chinese airline, CEA, which has double daily flights. Until now this has given the US carriers a market advantage, with essentially one Chinese operator competing with three American carriers.

The future is for it to become the new aviation gateway of northern China

Now, there will be multi-airline competition. At Beijing, CEA, CSA and other local carriers will now be able to compete directly with Air China.

Both CEA and CSA have already been given base rights at Daxing. China Eastern and its subsidiaries Shanghai Airlines and China United Airlines will operate more than 150 flights between them from Daxing, including international services from Beijing to the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia and Japan.

China Eastern’s cash cow, the Beijing-Shanghai shuttle express, hopes to cover four routes linking the two cities’ four airports – Beijing’s Capital and Daxing and Shanghai’s Pudong and Hongqiao – with about 30 flights per day to meet the buoyant demand of traffic between the nation’s two largest cities, despite both cities being serviced by bullet trains.

Flag carrier Air China will maintain its primary base at the Capital Airport but will also add new services from Daxing to major cities throughout the nation as well as major hubs across Europe.

Hainan Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines have said they will continue to use the existing airport as their base.

The CAAC has also given approval for 10 other international routes from Daxing, although these are to the relatively uncontested markets of Cairo, cities in Russia and cities in South Korea, but not Seoul. The flights are China Eastern’s Busan, Cheongju, Gwangju and Daegu; Xiamen Airlines to Busan and HNA’s Beijing Capital Airlines to Busan, Cairo, Moscow and St Petersburg.

Clearly, the likes of CSA and CEA are bent on taking full advantage of the access to Beijing by boosting services from the Chinese capital to cities in Europe and the US. All in all, it is ushering in a new era of competition between the Chinese giants.

How quickly multi-air competition will be extended to Shanghai, Guangzhou and other centres is not yet known but the prospect could pose a further threat to foreign airlines, including Qantas. China’s big three, as well as the likes of Hainan Airlines, are already offering keenly-priced fares from Australia through China to Europe, drawing off a share of the traditional Kangaroo Route traffic through Singapore and, more lately, the Gulf.

Emerging fare competition
With face-to-face competition between Chinese carriers for the first time on major routes it is highly likely to spark serious fare competition that will see flying to Europe through China become even more attractive to increasing numbers of Australia-Europe flyers. There may also be an impact on other Asian transit hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as Tokyo and Seoul, used by many travelers as transit points to the US.

At the moment, however, it is not simply a matter of airlines being able to suddenly leap onto new routes outside their home bases. As with most things in China, there are strict rules. A CAAC regulation says a long-haul route can have another competitor only if the existing Chinese airline has less than a 70 per cent frequency share and total frequencies by Chinese and foreign airlines add up to 14 weekly flights.

If the 70 per cent threshold requirement is not met, competition can still be introduced if the existing airline has held a monopoly for six years, which obviously does apply to all three of China’s big three at their home cities. Air China, of course, will want reciprocal rights in Shanghai and Guangzhou and this is certainly possible given there has been terminal expansion at Shanghai’s Pudong airport as well as at Guangzhou.

In Beijing, the emergence of Daxing also opens up opportunities for foreign carriers to obtain more slots. Carriers from overseas, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, will operate at both airports. Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, Delta and Finnair have already announced their respective new routes to Daxing to tap the potential of the facility. LOT Polish Airlines has announced it will operate to Daxing from Warsaw and British Airways will become the first international airline to move all operations to Daxing. The last British Airways flight to Capital Airport will depart on October 25 from London’s Heathrow Airport. “We are excited to be moving to Beijing Daxing. It will also support our ambition to increase leisure and business travel between China and the UK,” Noella Ferns, British Airways’ Executive Vice President in Greater China and the Philippines said.

Some foreign carriers, however, have been taking a wait and see approach. Industry insiders in China suggest there may be good reason for this, one of which is the location of Daxing in the far south of the Beijing municipality.

In comparison, BCIA is located close to Beijing’s business district and much of the expatriate community, many of whom live in the city’s northeast.

In the end, however, it is thought international operators will generally follow their Chinese partners with whom they share flight codes, booking systems and frequent flier arrangements. As such, Delta is expected to follow China Eastern in the SkyTeam alliance in moving most flights to Daxing, apart from those on the Beijing-Shanghai route, while American Airlines will also join China Southern at Daxing. Most Star Alliance carriers, including United Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Lufthansa, are expected to keep most their operations at BCIA, since Air China, a Star Alliance member, will continue to keep most of its flights there.

The major Chinese airlines have been gearing up for the new airport for some time. China Southern, for example, has built Asia’s largest hangar and auxiliary aircraft maintenance facilities capable of housing and servicing up to 12 Airbus A320 narrowbody jets under one roof. It includes an operational control centre and Asia’s largest aviation food production centre. The airline will have 40 per cent of the total airport slots.

China Eastern was offered 30 per cent of the time slots and will transfer part of its flight operations to Daxing while Air China will operate some flights out of the new airport. The allocation of slots came after what local officials described as “intensive lobbying, high-level horse trading and political maneuvering” between China’s three main State-owned airlines.

Some foreign carriers, however, have been taking a wait and see approach

Impressive facility
As for the airport itself, it is a more than impressive facility. The colossal terminal is a web of concrete, rebar and glass with a central atrium and security hall with five curved spokes, plus five outdoor gardens at the end of the five semi-transparent wings. Despite its vast size, Daxing’s operator has promised short walking distances, aided by automatic people movers and clear signage. Officials say it is no more than 600 meters from the central security check to the farthest gate in each wing. It was designed by ADP Ingénierie, a subsidiary of Paris-based airport authority Aéroports de Paris, alongside the late, great British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, who also masterminded China’s Guangzhou Opera House. Passengers will be able to access Daxing by high-speed train within three hours from around 28 cities. Once they arrive, they will find a futuristic 700,000 square metre terminal and 80,000 square metre ground transportation centre connected to five concourses which snake out from the primary hall.

Unusually for an airport, its formation is composed of a single passenger handling centre rather than several terminals. According to the designers, this borrows from traditional Chinese architecture that organises interconnected spaces around a central courtyard and will minimise the building’s environmental footprint.

The Chinese government is understood to want to turn the southern suburbs of Beijing into a new super city that will create economic growth and prosperity, as well as major regeneration in the city’s far south, including the Tianjin and Hebei provinces.

The region has traditionally relied on farming but will now have direct access to the airport by rail from Xiong’an, as well as several governmental offices newly relocated to the region. Although the airport’s terminal comes in second to Istanbul in terms of size it does boast to be the world’s largest integrated transport hub. “The terminal building is also the world’s largest built with a seamless steel structure, boasting the world’s first design of double-deck departure and double-deck arrival platforms,” said Bai Henghong, project director with the Beijing Construction Group.

The airport’s construction required 57,000 tons of steel. Supporting infrastructure, including expressways and a high-speed rail line were also completed on schedule.

Whatever impact Daxing ends up having on China’s wider aviation scene, including other regional hubs and international passenger flows, the Beijing area at least seems set to be a big winner. The CAAC estimated the new airport can generate 600,000 new jobs and contribute $130 billion to the regional economy. There is little doubt, however, that if China is to take full advantage of the opportunities it presents, the development of Daxing over coming years must be accompanied by further loosening up of the country’s aviation policy, particularly giving airlines more access to military airspace. After all, the growing number of commercial flights presents absolutely no threat to China’s security. Rather, they offer a massive opportunity in terms of economic development.