Shanghai Pudong International Airport

Shanghai Pudong International Airport is a major aviation hub in Asia, particularly in the East Asian region,faces the East China Sea. It is about 30 kilometers from downtown Shanghai, occupies a 40 kilometre square site adjacent to the coastline in the eastern edge of Pudong district within the boundaries of the Shanghai Municipality.The whole project took  two years to complete. The construction area of the main building of Pudong International Airport is about 278,000 square meters.

What is truly spectacular about this building is that its shape is that of an extremely big seagull stretching its wings to soar above the sea. Pudong International Airport can provide landing service for 36 aircrafts simultaneously. In addition, even the largest commercial aircraft in the world can be handled by this immense airport.The airport is organized around two main passenger terminals, flanked on both sides by three parallel runways. Current airport masterplans call for the building of a third passenger terminal, a satellite terminal and two additional runways by 2015, raising its capacity from the current 60 million passengers annually to 80 million, along with the ability to handle six million tonnes of air freight. A station for the Shanghai Maglev Train is sited between the passenger teminals, providing the world's first commercial high-speed maglev service to downtown Pudong in 7 minutes and 20 seconds. The airport is open round the clock, one of the few Chinese airports to do so.

The airport is the main hub for China Eastern Airlines and Shanghai Airlines, and a major international hub for Air China. A total of 28.92 million passengers passed through the airport in 2007, 45% higher than the 20 million capacity of Terminal 1 which was the sole operating terminal during that period, making the airport the 3rd busiest in the People's Republic of China. However, it handles more international passengers than Beijing Capital International Airport, currently the busiest Chinese airport in terms of total passengers handled, with 17,518,790 international passengers handled in 2007, a 9.0% increase over the previous year. It is also a major hub for the handling of air freight, with 2,559,310 metric tonnes handled in 2007 and making it the fourth busiest in the world in terms of freight traffic. Freight traffic grew 18% in 2007, and is likely to increase further when the new West Cargo Terminal Area becomes operational in the first half of 2008.