A new satellite terminal will be built at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport by 2015, the city’s top planning body announced this week.
According to a new citywide aviation report, released on Tuesday by the Shanghai Municipal Development & Reform Commission and reported by the Shanghai Daily, the new S1 Terminal will allow aircraft to park around its entire circumference.
In total, the city plans to expand the capacity of its two airports – Pudong and Hongqiao – to handle an estimated 100 million passengers by 2015, by which time both will be among the world’s busiest air hubs.
Pudong handled 41.5 million passengers in 2011, making it the world’s 21st busiest airport and the fourth busiest in China behind Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. A previous expansion plan has projected that the airport’s capacity will be increased to more than 60m passengers per year, with the addition of fourth and fifth runways and a third terminal. The S1 Terminal would be the fourth.
Hongqiao airport recently completed a similarly impressive expansion. The project, which was completed prior to the World Expo in 2010, boosted the airport’s capacity to approximately 40m passengers per year with the addition of a new terminal and runway. Hongqiao handled 33.1m passengers in 2011.
The latest plan also revealed that renovation work at the Terminal 1 buildings at both Pudong and Hongqiao will end soon, and that Hongqiao’s Terminal 2 will get more aerobridges by 2015.
