oneworld to shift to new mega terminal? [Beijing]
 

Beijing's new airport approved: airlines to be split by alliance
By John Walton 21 Jul, 2011 http://www.ausbt.com.au/beijing-s-ne...es-by-alliance
Moderator note: Balance of article removed due to TOS prohibition on including full text of copyright material in posts. For full text, please refer to link above, still active as of today (9 Aug 11).

Gardyloo
Oneworld moderator

I do not think CX/KA will move to a different airport from CA, given there is a JV on the PEK-HKG route.

It sounds like typical Chinese way of doing things but I do agree that capital airport is too congested.

Whenever the plane taxi for take-off, there's always a long queue!

ETA? 20 years? More?

If they can build a high speed rail network criss-crossing the nation in less than a decade, the new airport will also go from blueprint to opening tape-cut ceremony in less than five years.

Whether it'll be safe will be another matter. :D

2 years is my bet. 5 years is too long for the Chinese.

It's not just a new airport, it would be the largest airport in the world. 8 runways, 400 million passengers?!?!?!

And this may be the shortest thread in the world. Who is going to be carrying all these passengers out of Beijing? Is a new airline going to make Beijing South its hub.

Air China plans to have 400 aircraft by 2020 that along with Hainan's expansion and futher growth by other airlines should be able to fill up that airport

PEK's latest expansion was ~3 years ago and it is already running at close to 100% capacity.

You are correct but you are missing my point. Air China will not be using Beijing South as its hub according to the article.

Hub or not, if they build it, you can bet that CA be there on day one in a major way.

China better come up with a solution for easy transfers in between multiple city airports. Its starting to become a big problem all around China.

If they come with a solution that is not rail then they may be able to sell it to other countries.

Why split between two airports? The govt there has had practice displacing millions of people so I'm surprised they didn't go "Three Gorges Dam" style and build a ultra-mega airport in one location.

Yeah... splitting an airport this big sounds like hell unless they keep it alliance separate. You are going to need to move 1,000s and possibly 10,000s of passengers in between to two airport every hours.