China's newest airport terminal is world's largest in size, amenities

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China's newest airport terminal is world's largest in size, amenities

Article by: TIM JOHNSON , McClatchy New Service
Updated: March 1, 2008 - 7:19 PM

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BEIJING - China inaugurated the largest airport terminal in the world on Friday, a soaring golden-roofed structure evoking a flying dragon, after a race to finish it to cope with the expected deluge of visitors to the Beijing Summer Olympics.

Nearly 2 miles long, the $3.8 billion terminal, which covers 240 acres, is the world's largest covered structure.

"Our Chinese people should be very proud when they pass in and out of this airport," Aviation Minister Li Jiaxiang told a gaggle of journalists.

Employing 50,000 laborers at the peak of construction, the sky-lit terminal was built extraordinarily fast. From the groundbreaking to Friday's inauguration, only three years and nine months elapsed.

"It was incredibly fast," said Rory McGowan, a director of the London-based engineering firm Arup's China operations.

One of the 10 busiest airports in the world, Beijing's airport handled 53.5 million passengers last year, far above its capacity of 35 million. With the new terminal, the airport can handle 96 million passengers a year and 1,590 flights a day.

By 2012, the airport will become one of the five busiest in the world, after London's Heathrow, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, Chicago's O'Hare and Tokyo's Haneda, Arup said.

Terminal 3, as the new terminal is called, is double the size of two other terminals. Even with the addition, however, China's aviation growth will make the airport suffer from overcrowding again within seven years, experts say.

The terminal has 64 restaurants, 175 escalators, 173 elevators and 437 moving sidewalks -- but no bookstore that sells foreign-language periodicals.

Censorship is still imposed in China and average Chinese are never exposed to the kinds of critical views common in the media of democratic countries.