Airline passenger news and views

Only four years ago Beijing opened the world's biggest terminal ahead of the Olympic Games. A third one in the existing Beijing Capital International airport in the north of the city.

Designed by the British architect Norman Foster, it has more floor space than all five Heathrow terminals combined.

In perspective it seems like its size was underestimated at the time and soon it won't catch up with the rapid growth of China's economy.

For that reason China is set to build a new airport - which will become the world's largest. When the massive 54 square kilometre Beijing Daxing (Beijing South) International airport opens in 2017 it will have nine runways operating simultaneously, handling a astonishing 370,000 passengers a day - or an annual maximum of as many as 200 million people.

In comparison, London Heathrow, currently the world's busiest international airport, handles 68 million passengers annually.

Rik Krabbendam, managing director of NACO, winers of the master plan for the airport said: "NACO did it again! After winning the design competition for the master plan and the largest terminal in the World at the existing Beijing Capital International Airport, NACO proves to be successful again. Since the new airport will predominantly handle domestic traffic, the challenge was to fit in 100 million passenger movements on the areas of the new airport."

The new project is a logical step forward in the expansion of China's airline industry which, last year, reported a profit of 43bn yuan (£3.9bn), triple the figure for the previous year.

According to Airbus, Asia will be the world's biggest market by 2029, with approximately 8,560 new planes set to be delivered to the region - which is around a third of the world's new aircraft.

Consequentially, the project has alarmed environmental groups, who warn aircraft will increasingly contribute to the country's existing pollution problems and high greenhouse gas emissions.

Greepeace informs that as well as the noise, traffic, loss of cultivable land and threat to birds, airports are a major source of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on the size of the aircraft, the burning of fuel during a single flight produces between 8-50kg of nitrogen oxide as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur oxide.

The environmental problems are the price to pay as Chinese people fly further and more frequently, which means transport is taking up a bigger share of the country's greenhouse gas emissions - already the highest in the world.

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