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First commercial aircraft land at Beijing’s new airport in trial flight

Updated: May 13,2019 5:20 PM     CGTN

Planes from four Chinese airlines landed safely at the newly-built Beijing Daxing International Airport during an official flight test trial on May 13.

The airport is nearing the end of construction and will become the second in China’s capital city.

An Airbus A380 from China Southern Airlines became the first to land, followed by an A350-900 from China Eastern Airlines, a Boeing B747-8 from Air China and a B787-9 from Xiamen Airlines.

The test flights verified various systems in the airport, including flight procedures, minimum performance criteria, communication facilities navigation, meteorology, runways and the airfield lighting system.

This is the first time that commercial passenger aircraft have landed at the airport, signaling that the basic construction is complete. After this verification, the airport will go on with its efforts to get ready for commercial operation.

In addition to commercial flights, the airport has previously been tested with other types of planes for 112 hours.

Two more tests will be conducted before the airport is put into use. One is a specialized test for low visibility situations, the other is a full-scale test set for Aug 9.

The ICAO code of Beijing Daxing International Airport is approved by the IATA and CAAC to be “PKX” and “ZBAD.”

The new airport sits at the junction of Beijing’s southern Daxing district and Langfang, a city in northern Hebei province. It is expected to handle 45 million passengers annually by 2021 and 72 million by 2025. So far over 50 airlines have expressed their interest in operating from the airport.

The airport is of the highest standard in China and has the longest runways to provide the best condition for planes to land. The budget for building the airport amounted to $11.5 billion.

The whole construction process is set to end by June 30. And it is planned to put the airport into commercial use three months later.