Flights were grounded at Beijing Daxing International Airport on Monday after the airfield was inundated with floodwater that left aircraft stranded in lakes of water.
Several suburbs in the greater Beijing area, including Daxing, have been heavily impacted by torrential rain that has claimed the lives of at least 11 people and left dozens more injured. At least 27 people are reported missing.
Daxing Airport was forced to issue a severe weather Red Alert after rain lashed the airfield over the weekend and into the new week. A video shared on social media showed long-haul aircraft stranded in the flood water.
The $11.4 billion airport was opened in 2019 to relieve the pressure from Beijing Capital International Airport. The airfield is equipped with four runways, but there is scope to create a further three runways in the future, depending on demand.
Nicknamed ‘the starfish’, the Daxing Airport terminal building is the largest in the world and can handle around 72 million passengers per year. A planned expansion project, however, will increase capacity to more than 100 million passengers per year by 2024.
Beijing Capital Airport was also partially affected by the heavy rainfall and has been forced to cancel dozens of flights over the last few days with a flood alert in place across the airport.
