T3 begins operations, giving wings to Beijing airport

Photo taken on February 26 shows parts of T3.

(BEIJING, February 27) -- After 45 months of construction, terminal 3 (T3) of the Beijing Capital International Airport will receive its first batch of passengers on February 29, 2008, the airport announced on Tuesday.

With its capacity designed to reach 76 million passengers, an increase from the present 36 million, the airport will join the ranks of the most advanced airports in the world.

Taking a bird's eye view, T3 is 2.9km long from north to south and 750m wide from east to west. The 300 triangular windows of the T3C, T3D and T3E functional areas look like scales of a dragon.

With the launch of new operations, the airport will become the first of its kind in China to have three terminals, two control towers, and three runways in operation concurrently. Its capacity will grow to 1,700-1,800 operations per day from the current 1,000. It will be able to cater to large, sophisticated airplanes, such as the A380.

Occupying a construction area of 983,000 square meters, the airport's T3C will handle domestic and international boarding procedures, domestic departures, and domestic and international baggage claims; T3D will temporarily be used for charter flights for the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics; T3E will handle departures and arrivals of international passengers.

In addition to Shandong Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Australian Airlines, Qatar Airways, British Airways, and Israel Airlines, which will be the first to be relocated to terminal 3, 21 more airlines will be relocated here on March 26. They include Air China, Shanghai Airlines, Lufthansa, United Airlines, and Singapore Airlines.

Passengers can easily find Automated Passenger Movers (APM) which operate between T3 and the other two terminals. Running at a distance of 2.1km, the 11 APMs can carry an average of 8,200 passengers per hour.

T3 has a fast baggage moving facility with a capacity of 20,000 pieces per hour, which will meet the demands of increased passenger flow during the Olympic Games. New technologies will be used to trace and identify the baggage to prevent loss.

The terminal is equipped with a "single-light guide system," the first of its kind on the Chinese mainland. The system automatically sets the taxing routes for every arriving and departing aircraft, thus increasing the operational efficiency of the airport.