China Builds World's Largest Airport On Artificial Island

JAKARTA - China has again recorded extraordinary achievements in the world of aviation by building the world's largest airport located on an artificial island. This ambitious project, the Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport, is being built off the country's northeast coast.

Reported by VOI from the CNN website on Monday, December 23, 2024, the airport is planned to stand on an artificial island covering an area of 20 square kilometers and is equipped with four runways and a passenger terminal covering an area of 900,000 square meters.

Once completed, this airport is expected to be able to serve up to 80 million passengers per year via 540,000 flights. The first phase of this project is scheduled to be completed and will start operating in 2035.

"The largest offshore airport in the country is slowly emerging from sea levels such as sunrise in the east," wrote Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport's official account on WeChat's social media platform.

Once completed, Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport will be the largest airport in the world built on artificial islands, surpassing Hong Kong International Airport and Kansai Airport in Japan. However, this development is not without challenges.

"This project faces complex geological conditions, difficult drilling rates, and very high quality demands, while the construction schedule is very tight," said Li Xiang, chief engineer of Dalian Airport Construction and Development Co., Ltd.

Dalian, a city with a population of 7.5 million people, has long been an important transportation hub because of its strategic location, close to Japan and South Korea. The city's main airport, Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport, has been operating for nearly a century and has now reached its maximum capacity despite being expanded several times.

The new airport project has gone through a feasibility study process since 2003, but construction has only started in recent years.

The construction of Dalian Jinzhou Bay International Airport is part of China's great strategy to expand its aviation sector. The country is projected to surpass the United States as the world's largest air travel market.

In 2019, China inaugurated Daxing International Airport in Beijing, which became a symbol of the country's aviation sector's progress. At the time, the government stated that China needed 450 new airports by 2035 to meet growing market demand.