Passengers take first outbound route from Beijing Daxing International Airport to HongKong as the airport officially resumed outbound travel on January 17, 2023. The flight took off at 9:06 am with 101 passengers onboard. Photo: Tu Lei & Zhang Yashu/ GT

Beijing Daxing International Airport, the second air hub in the capital city, resumed its outbound overseas flights on Tuesday morning after a nearly three-year pandemic-induced suspension.

The first flight, operated by China Southern Airlines bound for Hong Kong with 101 passengers onboard, took off at 9:06 am, marking the official resumption of the airport's outbound passenger flights after China downgraded its management of COVID-19 from Class A to Class B and scrapped quarantine requirements for inbound travelers from January 8.

Guan Jie, a Beijing resident, said she will take the flight to Hong Kong then transfer to Boracay in the Philippines to celebrate the Chinese New Year with her family. 

"My first stop is Boracay island, where it is very warm, and I plan to take my child snorkeling," she told the Global Times. Her 11-year-old daughter was also excited to share the journey on her WeChat Moments. 

Another traveler named Lan Yu told the Global Times that this was her first overseas flight since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. She often flew to Japan and Hong Kong before the pandemic, and this year she will spend the Spring Festival in Hong Kong. "I will eat some delicious food, see scenic spots and relax," she said. 

Due to the pandemic, all international flights for Daxing airport were transferred to Beijing Capital International Airport as of March 2020.

On January 8, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said that flights would now revert to arriving in Beijing directly, instead of being diverted to other Chinese cities. 

China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines and Himalaya Airlines are among the first group of carriers to resume flights to and from the Daxing airport. 

The resumed routes include a China Southern flight to Hong Kong, which will operate three times per week. Himalaya Airlines will run one flight per week to Kathmandu. 

In addition, Beijing Capital Airlines is expected to open a route from Beijing Daxing to the Maldives on Wednesday. China Eastern Airlines plans to resume service from Beijing Daxing to Bangkok soon.

"After receiving the flight resumption plan, we continued to improve the customs operation process from the aspects of aircraft scheduling, and passenger and baggage flows, to make full preparations," Zhao Zhao, deputy director of Beijing Daxing International Airport Customs, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

At the quarantine site for inbound passengers, customs officials are equipped with domestically made intelligent equipment such as non-sensing infrared thermometers, self-service health declarations and inspection all-in-one machines. 

Customs stores the declaration data of inbound passengers, and their customs clearance times and body temperatures, to facilitate passengers' self-service customs clearance. 

Customs has taken the lead by getting fully equipped with new high-speed CT inspection equipment for luggage inspections, with a transmission speed of 0.5 m/s, which nearly doubles the speed of ordinary CT machines of 0.28 m/s, having the time for passengers to pass inspections, according to the Beijing Daxing International Airport Customs.

International transfers will also resume, with the adoption of a 144-hour visa-free policy for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Daxing airport said.

China Southern Airlines said it is assessing the resumption of the routes from Beijing Daxing to Seoul Gimpo and Seoul Incheon. Long-distance international routes, including Beijing to Amsterdam and Istanbul, are being reviewed and planned. China Southern also plans to open new routes from Beijing Daxing to London and Moscow.

After starting operations in 2019, the first international flight from Daxing airport took off on October 27 that year. Before the pandemic, the airport ran services to and from 13 countries and regions, according to the Xinhua News Agency.