Navigating through airports should not be a daunting task. Daxing International, the newest airport in Beijing, is making sure travelers traversing from one end of the terminal to the next, finds doing so as easy as ABC. The newly built star fish shaped mega terminal is purported to be 700,000 square meters (the size of 98 soccer fields put together, or half the size of Hong Kong). It rivals its Asian cousin Changi International Airport in Singapore for the prolific points of interest and probably bests it in the category of technology.
Daxing International Airport is currently the world’s largest airport and is expected to handle 70 million passengers annually by 2025 and over 100 million by 2040. The impressive terminal was opened this week by China’s President Xi Jinping, with many dignitaries, engineers, airport planners, et al to witness the auspicious event. The original purpose for this second airport in Beijing was to scale back the use of the main airport and ease some of the travel burden experienced at Beijing Capital International. However, since rolling out the project and the new structure took shape, planners have finally decided that both airports in Beijing will operate concurrently.
To make the travel experience less foreboding, technology has been one of the features that cause this airport to stand out. From the minute a passenger enters through the doors, they will be on camera. The facial recognition technology will be operating to process the passenger through the necessary securities and gates in record time.
Beijing Capital and Daxing currently trail Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International in America as the second busiest airport in the world. Certainly, Daxing International is out of the gate vying for bragging rights and looking to topple the US airport from its perch as the busiest in the not too distant future. This recent opening is added to the repertoire of structures throughout China that may be considered worth visiting. I have said this before and will say it again, itinerary planners like myself must include an airport discovery plan as part of the to-dos for clients once directing through such terminals.
Community Peeps, I don’t have a bucket list but if I did, touring Daxing would certainly be on it. More and more, we are seeing engineering feats that boggle the mind as first world countries build mega structures worth viewing. The amusing thought to me is, while the plan is to get passengers through terminals as quickly as possible, by way of the sundry attractions (this may be intentional too), they make it more difficult to leave. In my humble opinion as an occasional tourist and itinerary planner, no longer is travel through these mega airports an in an out process. What is your opinion on this issue? Share your thoughts with me in the comment box below.
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