Beijing Capital International Airport ( ),( ) is the main international airport that serves the capital city of Beijing, People's Republic of China. The IATA Airport Code is PEK, reflecting Beijing's former Romanization Peking. The code BJS is also frequently used, reflecting the current pinyin spelling of Beijing and including all airports in the Beijing metropolitan area; currently, Beijing Capital (PEK) is the only civil aviation airport that falls under BJS.
The airport is located 20 km to the northeast of Beijing city center. Although many consider it to lie in Shunyi District, it is, in fact, an exclave of Chaoyang District, Beijing.
The airport is a primary hub of operations for Air China, which flies to around 120 destinations (excluding cargo). It is also a hub for Hainan Airlines and China Southern Airlines. The airport expansion is largely funded by a 500-million-euro (USD 625 million) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The loan is the largest ever granted by the EIB in Asia; the agreement was signed during the eighth China-EU Summit held in September 2005.
Beijing Capital is today the busiest airport in the People's Republic of China, having registered double-digit growth annually since the SARS crisis of 2003. In 2004, it became the busiest airport in Asia by aircraft movements, overtaking Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). In terms of passengers, Beijing was the second-busiest airport in Asia after Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) and ninth-busiest worldwide in 2006. In 2006, it served 48,501,102 passengers, moved 1,028,908 million tonnes of cargo and had 376,340 aircraft movements. In 2006, BCIA is the 30th busiest airport in terms of traffic movements and the only airport in the Asia/Pacific region to appear in the top 30. It is also the 20th busiest airport in terms of cargo traffic. It operates around 1100 flights a day, and is expected to rise to 1500-1600 at the Olympics in 2008.
