A third airport for Beijing was proposed in 2008.
Initial proposals Early media reports in September 2011 suggested that there could be up to nine runways at the new airport: eight runways for civil aviation plus one runway dedicated to military usage. It would replace
Beijing Capital International Airport (which had 83 million passengers in 2013, second most in the world) as the main airport of Beijing, and be the largest in China. The airport was planned to be able to handle 120 to 200 million passengers a year, which, if capacity were fully used, would make it the
world's busiest airport by passenger traffic, surpassing
Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport by far.
Approval for construction Official approval for construction by National Development and Reform Commission on 22 December 2014. It called for an airport to be constructed in the southern part of
Daxing District of Beijing, along the border of Beijing and
Hebei Province. No design or plans were released due to ongoing negotiations. It was stated that it would consist of 7 runways, 6 for civilian use and 1 for military purposes. Construction has been completed as of September 2019 with a capacity of handling 75 million passengers by 2025. The cost of construction was initially estimated to be at least 70 billion RMB (US$11.2 billion), including the
Beijing–Xiong'an intercity railway (Beijing section), to
Beijing West railway station.
Design and contractors The airport's master plan was prepared by NACO (Netherlands Airport Consultants) and will feature a ground transportation hub providing the airport with public transportation links to high-speed rail, metro, expressways, Beijing Airport Bus routes, local buses and inter-airport transportation system. The terminal building was designed by British architects
Zaha Hadid Architects, French planners
ADPI and partners, and executed by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD). It consists of a central hub with six curved spokes. The façade was designed by XinShan Curtainwall and Beijing Institute of Architectural Design.
Arup was subcontracted by Beijing Institute of Architectural Design as the fire engineering consultant,
BuroHappold Engineering, as part of the consortium, worked with the architects to integrate engineering solutions into the design of the airport. Other contractors involved in the project include China Electronics Engineering Design Institute, Civil Aviation Electronic Technology, The Third Rail Survey and Design Institute Group Corporation (TSDI China), Beijing City Construction Design Research General Institute and Beijing General Municipal Engineering Design & Research Institute. and was led by chief engineer Guo Yanchi. By March 2017, the terminal had its concrete structure capped. On 23 January 2019, the first
flight inspection began to be carried out and was expected to be completed in March. On 30 June 2019, the airport officially finished construction and was in preparation for its September opening. The construction of the airport itself cost
CN¥120bn (approximately US$17
bn), with other projects in the periphery costing CN¥330bn (US$46.2bn), giving a total cost of CN¥450bn (US$63bn).
Opening The airport opened on 25 September 2019—just six days before the
70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China—in a ceremony attended by the
Chinese president and
General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping. Inaugural flights from seven Chinese airlines began later in the afternoon, although flights operating out of the airport on the day were member-only, with the first official flight out of the airport an
Airbus A380 operated by
China Southern Airlines. Flights for the public began the following day on 26 September 2019. Upon opening of the Daxing Airport,
Beijing Nanyuan Airport, the oldest airport in China, closed on the same day. A military airfield will coexist in Daxing, as was the case in Nanyuan.
Service development It was initially planned for airlines of the
SkyTeam alliance to be relocated to the new airport, while
Star Alliance airlines would remain at Capital, effectively making both airports hubs. This was confirmed in 2016, when the
Civil Aviation Administration of China announced that
China Southern Airlines,
China Eastern Airlines and
XiamenAir along with other
SkyTeam airlines would move to the new airport, while
Air China and other
Star Alliance carriers would remain at Capital. China Southern, China Eastern and
Beijing Capital Airlines' intentions to move to Daxing were confirmed by a Xinhua report in December 2017. Ten passenger airlines (
China Southern Airlines,
China United Airlines,
Shanghai Airlines,
Beijing Capital Airlines,
Hebei Airlines,
Spring Airlines,
Okay Airways,
Juneyao Airlines,
XiamenAir and
Donghai Airlines) and one cargo airline (
China Postal Airlines) signed agreements with the Capital Airport Group to enter the new airport.
CAAC required each Mainland Chinese airline (other than
China Postal Airlines) to serve only one Beijing-area airport following the opening of Daxing, but allowed foreign airlines (including
Hong Kong,
Macau and
Taiwan-based airlines) to operate from both airports if they wished to do so. China Eastern Group and China Southern Group were each allocated 40% of landing slots with the remaining 20% for smaller Mainland China and international airlines. However, on 1 May 2019, this plan was changed by CAAC, with China Eastern Group relinquishing 10% of its allocated slots (to give it 30% of slots) to Air China Group in exchange for the China Eastern group continuing to operate its Shanghai-Beijing flights at Beijing Capital Airport.
SkyTeam members are slowly moving services to Daxing.
XiamenAir has relocated their routes to Daxing. In June 2020,
Aeroflot ended flights from Capital in favor of Daxing. Similarly,
China Eastern Airlines has shifted all of its operations to Daxing except for flights to Shanghai-Hongqiao. However, their plan to launch new international routes to Paris and Tokyo at the end of March 2020 have not been realised because of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore,
Delta Air Lines announced their intention to move at the end of April 2020, but are currently delayed by the slow reopening of
China-US flight allocations. The
Oneworld alliance announced in February 2019, that its member airlines were considering a formal co-location scheme at Daxing, particularly as many of them, now have codeshare partnerships with
China Southern. Alliance members,
British Airways and
Malaysia Airlines moved their London-Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flights to Daxing.
S7 Airlines moved two of its five Russian destinations to Daxing from Capital on March 29, 2020 while suspending the other three.
Qatar Airways announced its intention to move to Daxing between June and August 2020 and is currently flying out of the airport.
Royal Air Maroc which joined the alliance on 1 April 2020 already operates out of Daxing. However,
Cathay Pacific has decided to maintain its flights at Capital.
Finnair, which flew from Helsinki-to-Daxing while retaining a daily flight to Capital, has suspended both routes because of Russian airspace bans as a result of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Some foreign
Star Alliance airlines are joining full member Air China and connecting partner Juneyao at Daxing. In January 2020,
LOT Polish launched a 4-weekly flight from Warsaw, complementing its three-weekly flight to Capital.
Lufthansa and
Swiss International Air Lines initially announced in the same month that they would move their Frankfurt-Beijing and Zurich-Beijing flights from Capital to Daxing at the end of March 2020. However, these plans have not yet materialize because of the lingering effects on Chinese aviation brought by the
COVID-19 pandemic. On 25 October 2020, China Southern Airlines transferred all its Beijing flights to Daxing Airport. == Airport facilities ==