Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
Work on Beijing’s long-planned airport at Daxing will begin this year, with the aim of opening the facility in 2018, starting with an annual capacity of 45 million passengers and 1.5 million tons of freight.
For a glimpse of China's commercial aviation future, take a look at Shenzhen, the mainland's most developed city. The immediate outlook for the metropolis of 10 million, and therefore the more distant future for the rest of the country, is slower commercial aviation growth and less urgent need for new infrastructure.
Reporting in 2008 on Beijing's studies for a new airport, Aviation Week suggested that the facility would “probably be planned on a gargantuan scale.” We were not wrong. Plans show that the new facility at Daxing, now going ahead, could ultimately handle 130 million passengers a year with seven runways, possibly nine. One of the runways will be reserved for the air force.
