The third terminal building of the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) will be put to use in February 2008 while its new runway will be operational next month, according to BCIA Group General Manager Zhang Zhizhong.
The capacity enhancement is aimed at meeting growing passenger flow during the 2008 Olympic Games, he told a press conference at the airport on Wednesday.
With the use of the new facilities, the airport is expected to see 600,000 take-offs a year from the current 200,000, and its yearly passenger throughput will expand to 82 million from 36 million now.
The airport has now two terminal buildings with a floor area of 78,000 sq meters and 336,000 sq meters respectively. Its two existing runways have a length of 3,800 meters and 3,200 meters respectively. With an investment of 27 billion yuan, the third phase expansion began in March 2004, including a terminal building of 986,000 sq meters and a runway 3,800 meters long and 60 meters wide.
Also, there will be a 6,300 sq meter brand new VIP and special plane service building which will facilitate the passage of the international passengers participating in the Olympics and Paralympics.
As an estimated 50 percent of the Olympic Family members will take chartered flights to Beijing, the C section of T3 will handle arrivals and departures of such flights. It will take about 40 minutes to treat an arrival of an Olympic chartered flight and 80 minutes for a Paralympic one, Zhang declared.
"We expect that the international passengers will spend less time at our airport than in Sidney or Athens," he added.
Zhang said the airlines and the airport itself had been asked to draw up plans on the provision of accessible facilities and services. So far the airport has spent seven million yuan to modify lifts, toilets, blind tracks, and low level counters. The China Disabled Persons' Federation, along with some other organizations, has spent three million yuan to buy wheelchairs and electric cars for the airport.
In cooperation with the airports in Hong Kong and Singapore, the Beijing airport has completed a training program for 500 of its staff. It has formed a security command center and by the end of 2007, an anti-terrorist exercise will be staged.