Earlier today, Beijing Daxing welcomed its 20 millionth passenger of 2021 so far. According to reports, the lucky passenger was a Mr Wang, traveling to Xi’an with China Eastern Airlines. This is the first time the airport has hit the 20m passenger milestone in a calendar year since its opening.
Beijing’s new Daxing Airport was opened roughly two years ago. The airport was intended to become the Chinese capital’s aviation hub, but then quickly found it had to deal with the impacts of the pandemic as it initially took hold in China. Despite a less than optimal start, it seems as though things are now progressing well for the city’s new aviation metropolis.
20 million passengers in 2021
While China was the first country to suffer the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, its aviation industry was also one of the first to really rebound from these impacts. One of these airports is the relatively new Beijing Daxing Airport, built to the city’s south.
Today, the airport celebrated handling 20 million passengers so far in 2021. According to Ecns.cn, Mr Wang was traveling on flight MU2106. According to the publication, the airport has handled almost 40 million passengers, with 315,000 flight movements since opening two years ago. On its busiest day yet, 907 flights moved 140,000 passengers.
An airport that’s booming
When we look at the data from RadarBox.com, it is clear to see just how Daxing Airport has taken off over the last couple of years. After opening at the end of September 2019, the airport’s average daily flights quickly peaked at 248 per day towards the end of October. It then fell slightly before reaching 262 in early-to-mid-January 2020.
Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. At the height of the pandemic’s impact at the start of March, RadarBox.com recorded an average of just 35 flights a day from the airport. This grew sharply to 381 in early June, before once again falling to 61 before the end of the month.
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Since then, the numbers have grown far higher, and though a couple more drops have occurred, it is riding high. Average daily flights reached a peak in the last week of March. Between March 26th and April 2nd, the seven-day average of daily flights using Daxing Airport hit 846. This was a 1333.90% increase year on year.
Mainly local traffic
While many international airlines such as British Airways and LOT Polish Airlines were quick to move their international operations to Daxing, almost all traffic using the airport in the last year has been domestic, according to data from RadarBox.com.
The busiest route is between Daxing and Guangzhou, which saw an average of 141.5 movements a week, accounting for 4.4% of total traffic. Interestingly, the first non-Chinese airport on the list is Gimpo International Airport in South Korea. At place 142, the route saw an average of 0.2 weekly movements over the past 12 months.
While the complete list of routes operated in the past 12 months is 214 destinations long, only a handful of them are international, and most saw fewer than 0.1 weekly movements over the past 12 months.
Have you visited Beijing Daxing Airport? How did you find it? Let us know what you think and why in the comments!
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