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A second airport will be built in Beijing according to a senior official.
Scheduled to open in 2015, the new facility will provide additional capacity once Capital International reaches its maximum.
A new, third terminal at Capital will open for testing at the end of next month.
Yang Guoqing, deputy minister of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), said there will be no further large-scale developments at Capital.
He dismissed rumors the second international airport will be built in Beijing's Daxing district.
He said the location of the second airport has not been decided, because choosing the right location is a very complicated matter.
Yang said the economic development strategy of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and the pattern of passenger and cargo flow has to be considered.
He said the new airport should also not come into conflict with the existing facilities in Beijing and Tianjin in terms of air space.
The CAAC is currently conducting a study of several world cities that have two or more airports, including New York and Shanghai, to help it decide on the best location.
The idea for the facility emerged in 2002, after Beijing won the rights to host the 2008 Olympics.
While the Beijing municipal government and the CAAC suggested expanding Capital airport to handle the high passenger flow during the Games, authorities in Tianjin municipality and Hebei province proposed the development of a new airport within their regions as a solution.
The central government decided in 2003 on the expansion of Capital and ordered all works to be completed before 2008, Zhang Guobao, deputy minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, said.
The expanded airport has been designed to handle 76 million passengers and 1.8 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2015.
The new third terminal has been billed as the largest and most advanced in the country, with the US$3.75 billion investment expected to be recovered in 12 years.
Two areas of the terminal - T3C and T3E - have been completed and passed system tests last year.
Zhang, who is also chief commander of the airport expansion project, said the first batch of six airlines, including two domestic carriers and four foreign ones, will move into T3 on February 29. A second batch of 26 airlines, including Air China and 11 Star Alliance members, will move in on March 26.
CargonewsAsia
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