| I agree and love it! And thankfully Singapore Airlines (my country's flagship carrier) is flying there from Singapore Changi Airport's new Terminal 3 (opened in Jan 9 2008) to Beijing Capital In'l Airport's Terminal 3! That is just too perfect. And to my surprise this terminal opened without a single hiccup (compared to London Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5, which opened on the same day as Beijing's)! See what Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Capital_International_Airport): Terminal 3 The construction of Terminal 3 started on March 28, 2004.It opens on February 29, 2008 and becomes fully operational on March 26, 2008, when Air China, Shanghai Airlines, other Star Alliance members, and other international airlines move in. It was designed by a consortium of NACO, Netherlands Airport Consultants B.V., UK Architect Foster and Partners and ARUP. The budget of the expansion is US$3.5 billion. Far grander in size and scale than the existing terminals, it will become the largest airport terminal building complex built in a single phase with 986,000 sq. meters in total floor area. It will feature a main passenger terminal (Terminal 3A), two satellite concourses (Terminal 3B and Terminal 3C) and five floors above ground and two underground. System, Security and Luggage A 300,000-sq.m transportation centre is located at the front of T3. 7,000 car parking spaces will be available if the two-level underground parking lot is fully employed. The transportation centre will have three lanes for different types of vehicles, airport buses, taxies and private vehicles, which will enable a smooth flow of passengers. People bound for T3 will exit their vehicles here and enter T3 via an aisle within five minutes. The transportation centre will also have a light-rail station on a line that begins at the Dongzhimen stop on the Beijing Subway in Central Beijing. Travel time from Dongzhimen to T3 will be about 18 minutes. There will be electrical outlets on either end of every row of seats in the terminal. There will be 243 elevators, escalators or moving walkways; and every restroom is accompanied by a mothers’ room where diapers can be changed. There is also a room for travellers with disabilities. One of Terminal 3's highlights is the US$240 million luggage-transfer system. The luggage system is equipped with yellow carts, each of which has a code, matching the bar code on every piece of luggage loaded on it, allowing easy and accurate tracking. More than 200 cameras will be used to monitor activities in the luggage area. The luggage system can handle 19,200 pieces of luggage per hour. After luggage is checked in at any one of the 292 counters at Terminal 3A, they can be transferred at the speed of ten metres per second. Even for international routes, luggage can travel from T3A to T3B in five minutes. Arriving passengers should be able to begin retrieving their luggage within 4.5 minutes after airplanes are unloaded. Along with X-ray scanners, additional equipment conducts checks such as for explosives. Passengers will be able to check in their luggage at the airport several hours or even a day before their flight. The airport will store them in its luggage system and then load them on the correct airplane. The Look A 98.3-metre monitoring tower stands at the southern end of T3, the highest building at the airport. The roof of T3 is red, the Chinese colour for good luck. The terminal’s ceilings use white strips for decoration and to indicate directions. Under the white strips, the basic colour of the ceiling is orange with light to dark tones indicating where a passenger is inside the building. It is light orange in the centre and deepens as it extends to the sides in T3B and is the other way round in T3A. The roof of T3 has dozens of windows to let in daylight. Light angles can be adjusted to ensure adequate interior lighting. Many traditional Chinese elements will be employed in the terminal’s interior decoration, including a “Menhai,” a big copper vat used to store water for fighting fires in the Forbidden City, and the carvings imitating the famous Nine-Dragon Wall (Jiulongbi). An indoor garden will be constructed in the T3B waiting area, in the style of imperial gardens such as the Summer Palace. In T3A, a tunnel landscape of an underground garden has been finished with plants on each side so that passengers can appreciate them inside the mini-train. Facilities The T3 food-service area is called a “global kitchen,” where 72 stores will provide food ranging from formal dishes to fast food, from Chinese to western, from bakery goods to ice cream. Airport officials have promised that people who buy products at the airport will see the same prices as in Central Beijing. In addition to food and drink businesses, there will be a 12,600-sq.m domestic retail area, a 10,600-sq.m duty-free-store area and nearly 7,000-sq.m convenience service area, including banks, business centres, Internet services and more. At 45,200 sq.m, the commercial area will be twice the size of Beijing’s Lufthansa Shopping Centres. Transportation between the three terminals To get from Terminal 3A to 3B, Both domestic and international travellers will have to get boarding passes at T3A, but international passengers have to board from T3B. The two-kilometre trip between the two buildings is too far for walking, so the airport will have a free mini-train that shuttles between the two in three minutes. To help passengers that go to the wrong terminal, the airport will provide bus transportation between T3 and the old terminals for free from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The buses set out every ten minutes from 8 a.m. to 8p.m., and every 20 minutes during other times.[16] When completed, it will provide 66 more aerobridges or jetways - further complemented with remote parking bays which will bring the total of gates to 120 for the terminal alone. An additional runway is also projected to be constructed at that time. It will also have an extra capacity of 50 million people bringing the total to approximately 82 million passengers yearly. Upon completion, it is reported that passengers will be able to travel from the entrance of Terminal 3 to the farthest gate in less than 5 minutes. |
Beijing Airport Terminal 3 (T3) Opens