- New mega airport, the Beijing Daxing Airport.
- At one point there were up to 40,000 workers working here.
- Whoa!
(upbeat music)
The airport here has became a major tourist site.
It's an incredible feature at Daxing Airport.
So I wanna take you guys for a visit to Chinese Garden.
So here we're at the top of the airport, the garden here.
(air whooshing)
(mellow electronic music)
Look at us, behind.
This is Chinese high speed train.
Every seat here just looks like a first class seat
on the aeroplane, don't you agree?
(upbeat music)
So today I am going to take you to explore
China's new mega airport.
The Beijing Daxing Airport.
At least 46 kilometres south of Beijing city.
And, there are two ways to get there by train.
One is on a high speed rail like this,
the Chinese fast bullet train.
And, it costs about 90 Yuan.
You get a seat in business class like this,
or 25 yuan in the second class.
And the second way is by a dedicated metro line,
and it's about 25 minutes by the metro line.
There's one button on the chair you push down.
It convert to a flat bed.
Just as good as first class seats on the aeroplanes .
I have the whole cabin here, myself.
Business class, only five seats available.
It's incredibly quiet on this train.
And, you couldn't hear much noise.
And it's very little vibration as well.
So now we're gonna speed up all the way to Daxing.
(lighthearted guitar music)
So I arrived China yesterday,
and I have to be honest,
there's something bothers me.
I couldn't check my Google mail,
I couldn't watch YouTube, Netflix.
I couldn't commenting on Instagram.
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(door beeping)
Wow, that was very very smart.
They can rotate the seats around 180 degrees
when they change track and go to the other directions.
Here I come, Beijing Daxing.
(lighthearted music)
British Airways the flight behind me
is the first to arrive.
A foreign airline, first arrival at Daxing Airport today,
at 9:10 AM.
- Here we are, Sam.
Beijing Daxing (speaking in foreign language).
The new Daxing International Airport.
- [Sam] Hello, Christiano. We've been waiting for you!
- Hey.
- [Sam] How are you (laughs)?
- Good to see you. Finally here.
And it's a great pleasure to be here with you guys,
for the opening of the new Daxing Airport.
The end of eights years of work
in great collaboration with our French and Chinese partners.
- [Sam] Welcome to Beijing. - Hello.
- [Sam] Welcome to Daxing.
- Ah! Hi, hello!
- [Sam] Welcome to Beijing. Welcome, welcome.
- Hello, ni hao.
- [Sam] First crew ever, welcome to Daxing Airport.
Welcome to Beijing.
- [Woman] Ni hao!
- This point right here,
between my feet, is the absolute centre of the building.
So, it's a six-armed star.
South here's international, the other four are domestic,
and then the north is the railway station.
Everything comes together geometrically right in this point.
- [Sam] Wow, look at this
- [Christiano] Right in the centre of the building.
- [Sam] Mirrors on the ground.
- At one point,
there were up to 40,000 workers working here--
- [Sam] Whoa!
- Uh, three times eight, so 24 hour shifts.
We had, at one point, 80 tower cranes.
Manoeuvring things on the site.
I think, rightly the people in China
are very very proud of this building
because it is, only possible to do something like this
amazing in China.
And one of the things that's really nice
about one of the design features that we have here
is that you can stand here, on the land side,
right up until the edge of the central, unifying space.
That brings people together.
So, one of the things that we have here,
which I wanted to briefly explain is the
vertically stacked design of the building.
So, we have, we're standing right up here
on this mezzanine with some restaurants and bars
on the land side.
And you look down into this main central canyon,
which is the big domestic departure canyon
with all the domestic retail.
Above it, you have international departures.
So, passengers cross the canyon
and they go over to emigration,
where they take their passport control
and go out to the international, up here to the south.
And then down below in this big oculus,
this big elliptical hole,
you have the immigration, where people are arriving.
The first thing they can do is look up
and see this wonderful space
that is quite uplifting and relaxing
after a long flight.
You see this central dome here,
where we have the national flag hanging,
it's a big dome, which brings in light.
You're coming through from the land side,
over to the air side, into the central dome,
and it's a space where you orientate yourself.
And then you can see there's different strips of light
that go down the individual piers,
so it becomes very intuitive,
the way you find your way to the gate.
And if you look down the piers,
you will see that you can see all the way down
to the pier ends,
you can see all the individual gates.
So, suddenly the airport is a sign.
Even though it's a very large building.
It's one of the largest, single volume
passenger terminals in the world.
It's not intimidating.
It's still on a human scale.
It uses this idea of courtyards,
which is something that comes out of traditional
Chinese architecture.
It uses this idea of layering of spaces,
which is also quite an urban feeling.
And makes people feel comfortable.
And, it also makes people feel like
they're in control of their journey.
So it's eight and a half, nine minutes,
from the central part of the building
to the furthest gate on the pier,
which is quite, quite remarkable
for an airport of this size.
And also, we do it all without the so called, APM.
We don't need one of those airport trains.
One of those airport people movers.
Everything is done on foot,
which makes it very sustainable also.
Here around the central space,
we have these six mega columns.
You can see here, one, two, three, four,
and fix and six are behind us.
Just with these six mega columns
and a space frame technology,
which is very large space frame technology
using steel-welding spheres
and hollow, round sections, so tubes.
Which has developed now,
and now over the last several decades in China.
It's now quite a sophisticated technology
that lets us span, you know,
these incredibly long distances, column free.
And so, what that means is
all the things you see inside here,
including where we're standing,
the retail pods, everything here in theory,
could be moved around.
Over the next 50 to 70 years,
which is kind of a lifespan of a project like this.
Things could move around and be replaced here
without changing the character of the building,
or having to gut it,
or having to kind of rip it apart.
- The airport here has became a major tourist site.
Look at the people continuously,
like a river coming in, taking photo and selfies.
They're not flyers, but they just coming to enjoy
the environment.
The brand new China's mega airport.
(lively music)
- [Sam] (speaking in foreign language)
- [Woman] (speaking in foreign language)
- (speaking in foreign language)
- [Sam] (speaking in foreign language)
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Here we are in level four,
which is the traditional full service check-in level
with traditional check-in desks.
Both for international and domestic travel passengers.
But also, what this airport has,
which is a huge innovation,
is the level below which is dedicated
to self-processing passengers who arrive
already with a boarding pass and have no bags
where they can drop a bag through an automatic
bag drop chest.
Frequent domestic travellers have their own level below.
And that really expedites passenger throughput.
- Coming out of the train station on the ground floor here,
I already see a lot of check-in counter.
This is the beauty of Daxing Airport.
A feature is a transportation hub,
seamlessly connected to the airport.
So, when you come out from the train,
you go straight to check-in,
go up third, fourth floor,
go through the security checkpoint
and go straight to the boarding gates.
The whole experience will be seamless.
Wow, when you arrive at the airport, straight away,
you felt the architecture is just wonderful, amazing.
There's lots of curve here.
You can see the whole airport is curved around,
and it just felt very spacious, very bright.
(upbeat music)
It's an incredible feature at Daxing Airport
where this here, a straight line, at 44 kilometre,
you could get through to Tian'anmen Square,
and then to the Bell Tower, to the Drum Tower,
to the National Stadium.
It is all a straight line.
They call the centre axe of Beijing
and I encourage you guys to come to see the landmark
here on the fourth floor of Daxing Airport.
So I just passed through the security
in the air side, international side, here.
You can cross the two bridges,
then you get to the custom,
then after that it will be the gate area.
(upbeat music)
So I am at the international pier at Daxing Airport,
a separate, is for domestic pier
and the international pier here.
And right in front of me, there's actually a very nice
Chinese garden.
So, I wanna take you guys for a visit the Chinese garden.
(upbeat music)
- Yeah, it's nice, it's really nice.
- Wow, who doesn't like to have a beautiful,
quiet, tranquil moment before your long haul flight?
(uplifting instrumental)
So this is located in the international pier towards
the end of the pier.
If you guys have a few hours,
then come out here.
Have some fresh air.
So here we're at the top of the airport, the garden here.
Yay!
(birds chirping)
(uplifting instrumental)
I haven't exercised long time.
As I've shown you here, you can actually do some exercise,
before or after your flight here in the lounge.
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Oh! This is a bunk bed.
So there's actually two lounges
in the international side of Daxing Airport.
This one I'm sitting at is called East Pacific Lounge.
It's actually a pay lounge.
And they expecting priority pass to come later on.
The other lounge is BCS. It's also partially open.
(upbeat music)
What's impressive is actually the bridge behind me.
You can kind of board direct from the lounge
and onto the aeroplane.
So when you compare Daxing with Istanbul,
which opened in April this year,
they're both mega airports projected to have
100 million passengers due time.
In my opinion, both Istanbul and Daxing are brand new,
built on a clean sheet, 21st century airport
with a lot of good connectivity technology
and good features.
The new Istanbul airport is actually a long, rectangular
shape built like a Turkish palace.
It is very grand, however I think it is very long walking
from one end to the other end.
The starfish shape, Daxing Airport, is actually quite smart.
From one end to the other end, I walked around
no more than 10 minutes in total.
Because of that five pier shape, like a starfish.
But, what I really want you guys come out to experience
both of the airport and share your opinion.
Which one do you like more.
- [Announcer] (muffled speaking)
Your flight, BA38, from Beijing to London.
- So British Airways is the first foreign airline
to depart out of Daxing here.
So, at 12:10 the flight depart for London.
(upbeat music)
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Hello! Welcome aboard.
May I have a look at your boarding pass?
This way please.
This cabin, the last to second row.
- I'm not flying today I'm sending off you guys.
You guys are making history here.
(laughs)
First international airline--
- Yes, we are.
- Arriving and departing Beijing.
- We are.
We'd love to have you onboard, sir.
- Ah, man. - (laughs)
- Love you. Thank you. - Love you too.
- Thank you. - Thank you very much.
- Bye-bye. - Bye-bye.
- [Flight Attendant On Left side] Fantastic.
(aeroplane whirring)
(upbeat music)
(aeroplane whirring)
(upbeat music)
(air whoosh)
(bell ring)