Beijing Capital is today the busiest airport in the People's Republic of China, having registered double-digit growth annually since the SARS crisis of 2003. In 2004, it became the busiest airport in Asia by aircraft movements, overtaking Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). In terms of passengers, Beijing was the second-busiest airport in Asia after Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) and ninth-busiest worldwide in 2006. In 2007, it served 53,736,923 passengers and had 399,986 aircraft movements. It was the 23rd busiest airport in terms of traffic movements. It is also the 20th busiest airport in terms of cargo traffic, having moved 1,028,908 million tonnes of cargo in 2006. It operates around 1100 flights a day, and is expected to rise to 1500-1600 at the Olympics in 2008.



Terminal 3
Terminal 3 opened in 2 stages: February 29, 2008 for trial operations and March 26, 2008 for business. It mainly houses Air China, Oneworld, Star Alliance, and other domestic and international flights. It is composed of three sections, C, D, and E (to avoid leading passengers to Terminal 1 or 2 when seeing the letters A and B). T3-C,D, and E are linked by an inter-terminal train.



-Terminal 3C (Domestic Hall)
-Terminal 3D (Olympics Hall)
-Terminal 3E (International Hall)



Construction of Terminal 3 started on March 28, 2004 and was opened on February 29, 2008, becoming fully operational on March 26, 2008, when Air China, Shanghai Airlines, other Star Alliance members, and other international airlines moved in. It was designed by a consortium of NACO, Netherlands Airport Consultants B.V., UK Architect Foster and Partners and ARUP. The budget of the expansion is US$3.5 billion. Far grander in size and scale than the existing terminals, it is the largest airport terminal building complex built in a single phase with 986,000 sq. meters in total floor area. It features a main passenger terminal (Terminal 3C), two satellite concourses (Terminal 3D and Terminal 3E) and five floors above ground and two underground. One of Terminal 3's highlights is the US$240 million luggage-transfer system.
The airport will be expected to handle 64 million passengers in 2008, due to the high demand from the Olympics. It is expected to be in the top 5 airports in passenger traffic. The capacity of the airport will be an estimated 82 million when the new terminal opens, up from the current 35.5 million.



Airport type: Public
Operator: Civil Aviation Administration of China
Serves: Beijing
Location: Chaoyang District, Beijing



Total Investment: US$3.5 billion