Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport begun its expansion construction on Aug 3, building its second terminal and its third runway.
The project, in which the new runway is expected to come into operation in 2014 and the terminal two years after, has received a total investment of RMB 18.85 billion. Its ambitions are to push the airport's passenger capacity to 80 million per year, cargo capacity to 2.5 million tons and runway capacity to 620,000 by 2020.
The new runway is designed to only receive landing planes and to work as a pair with the existing east runway which will only fly departing planes. According to the airport, the design helps the airport to deal with 100 planes maximum per hour, compared to 65 nowadays. "The problem of flight delay is expected to improve," the airport has said.
The second terminal covers 600,000 sq. m and has 100 landing slots. The highlight in the design is it mixes the areas for international flights and domestic flights. Passengers who need to transfer between the two kinds of flight won't need to walk a long way.
Last year, Baiyun Airport received over 45 million passengers, which exceeded its capacity. The expansion can help the airport strengthen its competitiveness in Asia when in 2015, it is estimated to have 130 international routes, the same as that of Hong Kong International Airport.
-By Lynus Tan and Richard Glauert, Life of Guangzhou
