Work set to begin soon on Beijing airport's 4th runway

Beijing Capital International Airport, the busiest in China, will soon start building a new runway to help ease the heavy burden on existing facilities and improve flight punctuality, airport managers said.

The airport's current three runways handle about 1,600 flights each day, which is more than their intended capacity and has resulted in less time for maintenance, according to Luo Liang, head of the airport's planning and development department.

"The construction of the new runway will start soon and be finished before the end of 2017. We expect the runway to become operational in 2018," he told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of the Fourth Beijing Global Friend Airport CEO Forum.

Once the fourth runway is put into use, it will mainly handle arriving aircraft, Luo said, adding that its operation will enable the airport to increase its on-time flight rate by 12 percent. The departure punctuality rate at the airport was less than 70 percent last year, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Currently, the airport is capable of handling 89 flights hourly in peak times, and the new runway will increase the number to 115. Furthermore, it will allow the airport to receive about 8 million more passengers each year, Luo said.

As the major civilian airport in the capital city, Beijing Capital International Airport served more than 86 million passengers on 582,000 flights last year. It has been listed as the second-busiest airport in the world by passenger numbers for five consecutive years, behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States, according to the Airports Council International.

As of January, 96 airlines operated at the airport, connecting the capital with 133 places on the Chinese mainland and 111 destinations in 54 nations and regions, the CAAC said.

In May, the airport renovated its oldest runway, which was put into use in 1958 when the airport began operations. Luo said the two other runways will be overhauled in the near future.

New capacity created by the additional runway and renovation of the other three will allow the airport to handle more international flights, according to Shi Boli, general manager of Beijing airport.

"We will help speed up the city's effort to set up air connectivity with nations covered by the Belt and Road Initiative, because now nearly half of these nations have no direct air links with Beijing," he said at the forum.

The Belt and Road Initiative, a development strategy proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, is expected to benefit about 4.4 billion people in 65 nations, the government has said.

Beijing airport has planned to work with Chinese and foreign airlines to open direct flights to link Beijing with Dublin, Atlanta and Manchester, England, Shi said.

In addition, the airport has submitted a proposal to central authorities and municipal departments to request an extension of the existing 72-hour period of visa-free transit for foreigners, said Meng Xianwei, director of air transportation at the airport.

"We suggest that the government should prolong the visa-free stay duration to five to seven days," he said.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn