At around 11 pm on Wednesday, as the last flight took off from Beijing Nanyuan Airport, the 109-year-old airport officially retired from serving civil aircraft.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Nanyuan airport supported a nearby aviation school that had sprung up in 1913, training more than 100 pilots who later became the backbone of China's civil aviation industry. It started serving as both a civilian and military airfield since 1984.
With its small terminal expanded in 2012, Nanyuan airport became a supplement to Beijing Capital International Airport, to help ease air traffic pressure on its counterpart to the north. In 2018, Nanyuan airport processed 6.51 million passengers in total.
To deliver a seamless connection between the two airports, China United Airlines, which was using Nanyuan airport as its main hub, carried out several operating simulations before.
为了实现两个机场间的无缝对接，曾以南苑机场作为主运营基地的中国联合航空公司进行了多次模拟运营。
On Wednesday, a total of 75 flights took off and landed at the airport — 38 inbound and 37 outbound, accommodating around 11,500 passengers.
周三，南苑机场共有75架航班起飞降落（其中38架入境，37架出境），累计服务旅客约11500名。
On Tuesday, one day before its closing, people went to the airport to snap pictures or to even take a short flight and keep the plane ticket as a souvenir. The airport will likely be converted into an aviation museum.
