The huge terminal at the new Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport covers over 470,000-square-meters and is projected to serve up to 60 million passengers a year, once its two additional runways are completed. We’ve installed 94 escalators throughout the airport to help people get to where they need to go.
Qingdao, a seaside city in eastern China, is famous for its east-meets-west architecture, streets lined with lush plane trees, and delicious seafood, that locals love to pair with Tsingtao – the ubiquitous hometown beer. The city’s new airport – the Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport – adds to the city’s modern image with its innovative design, sustainability credentials, and rich variety of restaurants.
The airport – twice the size of London’s Heathrow Airport – has dramatically boosted the province’s air traffic capacity, making the city a major transportation hub in Northeast Asia. It connects Qingdao to over 130 domestic destinations across China, while providing more than 50 international routes – including connections to 17 cities in neighboring Japan and South Korea.
With its status as a 4F-class airport, the Qingdao Jiaodong International Airport is large enough to accommodate the world’s biggest commercial aircrafts, including Airbus A380s and Boeing 787s. By 2025, its two runways will be able to handle 35 million passengers per year, and two more runways will be added in a second phase, further increasing overall capacity to 60 million.
The airport has already earned a reputation as a highly passenger-friendly airport, thanks to its clever design and smart traffic flow solutions. We’ve provided 94 Schindler 9300 escalators, to help ensure that time spent at the airport is seamless and even pleasurable.
"At airports, there’s a constant flow of people throughout the day, as travelers arrive and depart from flights," says Wenwei Wang, our project manager at the
airport. "It can be a stressful time for people, as they’re often in a rush and are not familiar with the building."
Despite housing nearly half a million square meters of floor space, the terminal’s starfish design, with five concourses spanning out from a central check-in hall, means the furthest gate is never more than 550 meters away – a blessing for anyone in a hurry.
"We always aim to provide the best passenger experience possible," says Wenwei. "Our products help people to get to where they are going easily and without any fuss. So, it helps make the experience stress-free and more pleasant."
It’s not just the airport that’s well organized. During construction our team had to co-ordinate with the many other sub-contractors involved, all of them working at the same time, but on different areas of the project. The key here, Wenwei explains, was clear communication across all parties involved.
"We had to manage our schedules and delivery times so that all the teams could meet their targets and complete the project on time," he says. "It was challenging but our team dealt with it very well and did a great job. We had a great working relationship with the developers and had weekly meetings
every Friday to discuss the construction scheduling."
Another key area of focus was safety. With the high volume and pace of expected passenger flow at the airport, our team looked to minimize the potential risk of accidents wherever possible. One way they did this was by installing anti-fall barriers on the high-level escalators. These are additional barriers on the outside of the escalators, so that even if someone were to lean over the handrails, they would be prevented from falling.
Since the airport opened in 2021, we’ve continued our dedication to maintaining the highest standards by stationing five full-time maintenance staff on-site so that there’s always someone on hand to help with any potential issue. They help to ensure all our escalators are in good working order, and perform equipment checks on a daily basis. They also carry out enhanced maintenance checks – covering component inspections, safety inspections, cleaning, and lubrication – every 15 days.
"Now that the Jiaodong Airport is open, I feel very proud of the work we did there," says Wenwei. "For many people, the airport is their gateway to Qingdao and the province of Shandong, so the fact that we've been able to help provide a great first impression means a lot to me and my team."