Skyteam to move all its flights to the future Beijing airport

Skyteam will be the main alliance to transfer all its flights to the future "New Beijing Airport" (provisional name), which is now scheduled to open in early 2019. The announcement was made on Thursday by the Civil Aviation Department of China, which has designated China Eastern and China Southern for this transfer. Air China, the national airline and member of the Star Alliance, will remain at the current Beijing Capital airport.
The future Beijing New Airport has been under construction since 2012. Located in Daxing, 46 km south of the Chinese capital, the hub will serve not only the Beijing metropolitan area but also those of Tanjin and Hebei. A train will link the future airport to ¨Beijing South Station in 30 minutes. The airport will have a surface area of 700,000 m2 and in its initial phase will be able to handle up to 45 million passengers a year - just over 50% of Beijing's total passenger traffic in 2015. Around 2025; the hub will have been expanded to handle up to 72 million annual passengers.
Skyteam currently accounts for just over 40% of all traffic at the airport, The alliance served 121 destinations from Beijing Capital in July this year, the equivalent of 1.9 million seats offered on nearly 8,500 flights per month (statistics published by FlightmapsAnalytics.com for July 2016). Of the 121 destinations linked by Skyteam to Beijing, 37 are located outside China, including Amsterdam, Istanbul, Moscow, Paris and Rome for Europe. China Eastern and China Southern will benefit from a three-year transition period to transfer all their domestic and international routes from Capital to New Airport.

The main Skyteam international routes from Beijing in terms of number of seats (July 2016)

(Source: FlightmapsAnalytics 07/16)