Beijing Airport, China

Arrival at Beijing Airport - Going Through Chinese Customs

Because our flight was delayed for 30 minutes at the Vancouver airport, we didn’t arrive at Beijing until 5:00pm local Beijing time on the 29th, and our transfer flight from Beijing to Chengdu leaves at 6:50, leaving us under 2 hours to get through the transfer process which involves:

Getting off the plane, going up to the 3rd floor, and getting through the Beijing airport customs
Going down two floors, and picking up our large suit cases
Going through security check, and sending these large suit cases with the flight
Heading back up to 2nd floor (the departure area), going through security check for our carry on luggage, then rushing down to our flight departure gate.

Going through Chinese customs at the Beijing airport.

Beijing Airport
Christmas lights and new years decorations at the luggage pickup area.

Typically, this transfer process would take longer than two hours, with most of the time sucked up by the long line-ups at the customs area, and the following security check areas. During peak season, you can expect this to take over two hours, and up to three hours if you’re unlucky. Fortunately, I try to travel during low season, and there was barely any line up in the foreign sections of the Beijing airport customs. As well, the security check areas didn’t have long line-ups either, and we were able to finish all of above in about 1.5 hours. The flight from Beijing to Chengdu had already started boarding when we arrived. There are 3 restaurants in the airport close to our departure gate, and if we had more time, we would have a bowl of noodles first.

A noodle house called "Mymill" just across from our departure gate #32.

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