China in great airport rush

Designed by British architect Lord Norman Foster, Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3, is expected to take less than three years to complete and will outdo in size both the current biggest airports, Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong and Heathrow in the UK.

Dutch airport planners NACO and UK engineers ARUP have teamed up with Foster and partners and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and Research to ensure the $2 billion new terminal is functional in time for the 2008 Olympic games.

Beijing Capital International Airport currently has two terminals, with 2 runaways and is the fourth-busiest airport in Asia, with a capacity to handle around 35 million visitors per year and 60 flights per hour. But with passenger traffic expected to exceed 60 million per annum by 2015, the decision to construct the vast new terminal was taken a few years ago.

Lord Foster is known for building cathedrals in glass, including a new dome for the German Reichstag and HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters. According to his firm’s website, the new Beijing airport terminal’s ‘‘soaring aerodynamic roof will reflect the poetry of flight. All passengers will enjoy a fully glazed single, lofty space, day lit through roof lights and bathed in colour changing from red to yellow as you progress through it.’’

The Chinese capital isn’t the only city in the mainland that is striving to impress. ‘‘Every city in China wants to have its own ‘international airport’ and so this is really an exciting emerging sector for public-private partnerships,’’ says Patrick Horgan, President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. The problem, he says, is actually ‘‘restraining excess investment rather than making things happen.’’

‘‘For China, airports are a No. 1 priority because as our economy grows they need to match that growth,’’ says Wang Kun Zhi, Director Airport Construction Division, Civil Aviation Authority of China. He reveals that China currently has more than 20 airports undergoing extensive upgradation.

The city of Guangzhou’s new international airport opened in August last year at a cost exceeding $2 billion and construction for its second phase which aims to double its current 27 million passenger capacity is already underway, scheduled to be completed by 2009.

Never one to be easily upstaged, Shanghai also has flyaway plans to match soaring passenger traffic as the city takes on global economic importance. Its hyper-modern Pudong airport, connected to the city by the world’s first operational magnetic levitating train, opened in 1999. In 2004, the airport handled nearly 500 flights per day, carrying more than 35 mn passengers. A second runway was opened this March.

Construction for a terminal 2 to be completed by 2007 is now underway and the airport’s long-term plan calls for a total of 4 terminals and 4 runways, for a final capacity of 80 million passengers per year. And as China bulldozes ahead with its gigantic plans, we will have to wait and watch how India’s more modest airport modernisation projects pan out.