China Eastern opens command centers for Daxing airport
China Eastern Airlines opened two operational centers at Beijing's new mega airport on Tuesday as the sprawling air hub gears up for its grand opening.
The centers are the airline's Airport Operation Center (AOC) and Hub Control Center (HCC), which will allow the Shanghai-based carrier and its affiliated airlines to operate flights at the new airport.
The two centers, dubbed the “brains” of the airline’s operations, have been built in accordance with the world’s top standards, the airline said. Their designs are based on similar centers at its headquarters in Shanghai but upgraded and optimized for the new airport.
The AOC is the safety, command and information center for an airline. It decides when and where each flight goes.
This center will take charge of the airline’s operations at the Daxing airport at first, and then take over all command and coordination work at both the Daxing and Capital International Airport in Beijing.
It will also work together with the AOC in Shanghai to deploy the carrier’s 720 aircraft globally around the clock.
The HCC, meanwhile, oversees operations of China Eastern at the new airport. It will coordinate passenger boarding and deplaning as well as cargo loading and unloading.
Daxing airport is expected to open by the end of September. It aims to meet the country's soaring air-service demand and relieve pressure on the current capital airport.
The new airport near the junction of Beijing's Daxing District and Langfang in north Hebei Province is expected to handle 45 million passengers annually by 2021 and 72 million by 2025, making it one of the busiest airports in the world, on par with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the US.
Covering a land area of 47 square kilometers, the new airport will be double the size of the capital airport, which is currently the largest airport in China.
Four runways will be ready when the airport opens in autumn, with a total of seven runways planned to handle the growing number of air travelers.
China Eastern and China Southern airlines will relocate 10 percent of their flights to Daxing airport. China United Airlines, Capital Airlines, Hebei Airlines and Xiamen Airlines will also be among the first batch of carriers to relocate to the new facility.
China Eastern will keep operating its Beijing-Shanghai express flights to the capital airport, but relocate some flights to the Daxing airport in winter, the Shanghai-based carrier said.
China Eastern has also completed the nation's first extreme low visibility take-off and landing tests at the mega airport, which enables pilots to take off or land at Daxing in haze or other low visibility conditions.