Beijing — President Xi Jinping on Wednesday inaugurated a second international airport for the Chinese capital with the world's biggest terminal ahead of celebrations of the Communist Party's 70th anniversary in power. Beijing Daxing International Airport is designed to handle 72 million passengers a year. Located on the capital's south side, it was built in less than five years at a cost of 120 billion yuan ($17 billion).

The airline's first commercial flight, a China Southern Airlines plane bound for the southern province of Guangdong, took off Wednesday afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Six more flights took off later for Shanghai and other destinations.

The main Beijing airport, located in the city's northeast, is the world's second-busiest after Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and is nearing capacity.

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Daxing, designed by the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, includes a terminal billed as the world's biggest at 11 million square feet. Despite that, its builders say travelers will need to walk no more than 2,000 feet to reach any boarding gate.

The vast, star-shaped airport is about 30 miles south of downtown Beijing. It has four runways, with plans for as many as three more.

The terminal building for the new Beijing Daxing International Airport is seen from above in an aerial view in Beijing, China, on September 24, 2019. AP

Given the distance from central Beijing, the new airport required a lot of investment to connect it to the capital. When you add the cost of new road and rail links and other infrastructure, the total cost of the project hit a whopping $63 billion.

Carriers including British Airways and state-owned China Southern, the country's biggest airline by passengers, plan to move to Daxing from Beijing Capital International Airport.

The capital has a third airport, Nanyuan, for domestic flights, but the government says that will close once Daxing is in operation.

People take photos before a launch ceremony at the new Beijing Daxing International Airport in Beijing on September 25, 2019. Getty

Editor's note: The estimated cost of the airport has been corrected.