Flying On Up: Beijing Capital Airport now second busiest in the world

Beijing’s Capital Airport has long been China’s busiest airport, and now it has even more bragging rights: after undergoing massive expansion over the past decade, it has overtaken London’s Heathrow airport to become the second busiest in the world based on passenger volume and now only trails Delta Air Lines’ mega hub Hartsfield-Jackson International in Atlanta.

According to the most up-to-date statistics for 2010, Capital Airport has handled 16,743,526 passengers so far this year, a 10.5% growth rate from 2009, while London’s Heathrow has handled 14,687,912. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson remains on top with 20,033,934 passengers handled.

The rise of Beijing Capital Airport (which is comprised of Terminals 1, 2 and 3) to second busiest has been astonishing after considering that just seven years ago in 2003, the airport didn’t even make it onto the top 30 list. But with the addition of the third runway in 2007 and the completion of Terminal 3 in 2008, and a Chinese population that is more and more able to afford air travel (not to mention a booming economy – crises be damned), the international gateway has seen accelerated growth.

From 2008 to 2009, BCA jumped from the number eight position to the number three position, and was the only airport in the top 10 to see a rise in passenger numbers, 16.5%. If that growth rate continues, we will soon see Atlanta lose its long-held crown as the world’s busiest.

Hopefully even with this new growth, authorities will be able to curb the airport’s already horrid departure delays – check this blog post back in January about Capital’s worst on time departure record, at 38%.

But that’s not all: Apparently, a new Beijing airport is planned for the future to alleviate the traffic at Capital opening in 2015. Strangely, the new airport is being reported as the city’s “second airport” even though a second airport, Nanyuan, already sits to the South. Perhaps the government has other plans for the southern airport in the future?

Stats from Airports Council International