China Southern Airlines is set to move its Beijing flights to Daxing International Airport. The airline aims to have transferred its entire Beijing operation to the capital’s new mega-airport by March 2021. 

All Beijing capacity transferred by 2021

As reported by FlightGlobal, China Southern has announced that it will be moving its entire Beijing operations from Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) to the new Beijing Daxing International (PKX) over the course of the coming year. 

China Southern moved 10% of its Beijing flights to Daxing when the airport opened back in September last year. The carrier has now announced it will be moving an additional 50% of its flights from Beijing Captial between the 12th of April and the 2nd of May. 

By March 2021, the airline intends to have transferred its entire capacity to Daxing. By 2025, it also plans to base more than 200 of its aircraft at the new airport, making it the largest carrier to operate from this location.

There are no details as to which routes will be moved first, but we know from previous experience that China Southern is at least planning for a direct route from Daxing to London Heathrow operated by an A380 later this year. The date has been set for the 18th of June. 

According to Routesonline, prior to that there will also be a new daily domestic A380 China Southern service from Daxing to Shenzen, starting on the 1st of June. It is the only airline to operate A380s on domestic routes.

China Southern A380
China Southern forecasts a loss of US$1.7 billion from 2020. Photo: Getty Images

Good relationship

China Southern was reportedly awarded the honor of being the first to launch commercial services from Daxing’s runways. It operated the first passenger flight on the 25th of September last year. This flight to Guangzhou was operated by one of the airline's Airbus A380s. 

Beijing Daxing was officially opened in September with a ceremony where the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, was present. The first international flight took off from the airport on the 27th of October with an Air China service to Bangkok. British Airways was the first international airline to arrive that very same day.

SWISS, Beijing, Daxing Airport
Beijing Daxing is predicted to welcome 75 million passengers per year by 2025. Photo: SWISS

75 million passengers by 2025

The largest single-structure airport terminal in the world, earlier figures indicated that Daxing International would handle 45 million passengers per year by 2021. By 2025, the numbers were predicted to increase to 75 million. If this forecast still holds in view of recent development for air traffic remains to be seen. 

But there is cause for cautious optimism. Chinese domestic capacity has been increasing week-by-week over the past month, following the sharp declines of January and February. China is most likely still on course to become the world’s largest domestic aviation market by 2028. 

Did you make it to Beijing’s new mega-airport Daxing? Are you excited about seeing it? Let us know in the comments.