Beijing’s brand new Daxing International Airport opened to flights as a China Southern Airlines flight took off on Wednesday afternoon.
The maiden flight served between Beijing and Guangzhou in south China. Following it, six other Chinese airlines started their respective first flight via the new airport. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday announced the official opening of the Beijing Daxing International Airport.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the operation ceremony of the airport on Wednesday morning.
Xi stressed that the new airport, which was built in less than five years and put into operation smoothly, has shown China’s prowess in engineering construction.
It is also a display of the political advantages of the CPC leadership and China’s socialist system that can mobilise all sources to make great achievements, said Xi.
It only takes a passenger eight minutes to walk from the center of the terminal building to the furthest departure gate.
Liu Chunchen, director of the airport department of China Civil Aviation Administration, said the combined annual passenger handling capacity of the Daxing airport and the Beijing Capital International Airport in the northeast of the city will exceed 250 million in the future.
According to the Daxing airport authority, 66 airlines have applied to operate at the airport. Among them, 20 are domestic airlines and 46 overseas ones. The airport will operate 116 routes connecting to 112 destinations globally around the end of this year.
China on Wednesday completed the main structure of the world’s longest cross-sea road-rail bridge in its southeastern province of Fujian.
The last steel truss girder, weighing 473 tonnes, was bolted on the Pingtan Strait Road-rail Bridge, another mega project in China, on Wednesday morning.
Hundreds of bridge builders clad in orange overalls, as well as government officials, hailed the completion on the bridge deck, with several rounds of fireworks being set off to celebrate the moment.
With a staggering span of 16.34 km, the bridge connects Pingtan Island and four nearby islets to the mainland of Fujian Province. -Xinhua
