Beijing Capital Airport

A very nice airport especially for international travel. It's huge clean with the times as it was built for the Olympic Games in 2008. Signs are in Chinese English etc. Staff is OK and lines to check in can be long but security is prompt. Trains to and from terminals are on time and clean. For the most part everything works well and gets you to where you need to go on time and in the most simple way. I've never really eaten there or bought items from the stores so I have no opinion of those features.

Flew from YVR to PER via PEK and back. On the southbound leg we spent 7 long cold hours at T3 in the middle of the night waiting for our connection after navigating through an unnecessarily complicated transiting process. We took advantage of the 72 hour visa-free pass to Beijing on the northbound leg and found immigration was generally efficient and staff did their best to answer our questions and guide us through the process. Security was the standard fare and lines moved reasonably quickly. T3 is visually stunning but there are few shops and fewer restaurants contained in its cavernous halls. Despite having been built for the Olympics this airport still invokes 70s era thinking in its design. No mass transit to or from the airport. Travellers need to take a train to access the gates. And amazingly we had to take a bus from the gate to the tarmac to board our Air China flight despite numerous empty gates and unused bridges. Each of these links reduces efficiency and adds to travel wait times. Unacceptable for a supposedly world class airport built in the last ten years.

The worst airport experience in almost 50 years of travel around the world. Arrived at 0200 in the morning no food no safe water nobody to tell us where we were to go to catch the aircraft to the Philippines. No heat in the terminal while it was snowing outside the ladies washroom was filthy approx. 40 seats in a huge terminal if you wanted to sit you sat on the cold floor. All terminal personnel claimed that they did not understand English. Had to offload our own luggage and finally when we found out that we were to wait for a bus to terminal 2 we had to load our own luggage onto the bus. Finally when the restaurants opened at about 0800 my wife and two other ladies ordered an egg omelette and tea waitress took $20 up front and offered no change.

One of the least convenient international airports in the world. Enjoy the bus ride transfer from Terminals 1-3. Everyone is rude and the security is slow. Immigration is inevitably backed up too. If you can fly through Hong Kong or Shanghai or Guangzhou or Seoul.

Overall it doesn't seem to be as bad as the reviews say. Though it's not Hong Kong or Changi terminal 3 is large and clean. When comparing this experience to my international arrivals experiences in Newark and Chicago Beijing takes the win. The staff seem friendlier and more organized than in the United States when it comes to immigration and security. Plus the building and facilities are a lot cleaner than most U.S. airports.

Worst airport I've been to! T2 is very old and dirty really needs to be refurbished restaurants are all overpriced. T3 is big mess very long walk to the boarding gate dirty toilets extremely rude security staff they are just busy talking and chatting with each other never seem to care about the long queue of passengers.

Not too bad perhaps the big crowds cause it to be a bit chaotic now and again. I have been in Beijing airport more than 20 times in and out it's quite reasonable. To be honest it's better than Australia and UK.

We only had an hour to transit on an Air China flight and it was a total nightmare. The queues were massive to get through immigration for transit. In fact on the way we left the airport which was far easier than transiting. Our flight was on final call and we still had not got through immigration. A staff member was shouting our flight number and got everyone running to the other side of the airport where we were left and later told to rejoin the queue that we had just left! This delayed us further! We did make it in the end after we ran to get on the flight. It was total chaos and it is very strange that you even need to go through immigration (twice) when just transiting. The staff were very unhelpful. The airport needs some serious reorganisation and more than 2 counters open!

Passed through on YVR-PEK-SIN Air China flights. This place is huge dreary inefficient and wreathed in a toxic smog. Had a 3-hour connection window which was almost not enough. As an international transit passenger I had to queue for a passport check and transit visa then I got dumped into the general security screening which was chaos. This happened on the way back too. Both flights out of PEK were loaded using buses out to the tarmac. This when several terminal gates were available. So a big plane loaded via one stairway in the cold and smog. Not nice and unacceptable for a big newish airport and its national carrier. Even the Air China lounge to which I managed to get access on a 6-hour layover another time is dreary and makeshift. Avoid this place.

I chose to fly Air China outbound from Singapore to London Heathrow and then LHR to Bangkok. What a disgrace of an airport to a country such as China. Terminal 3 is a modern building but transiting here is a nightmare at the best of times. Immigration staff stamp transit passengers' passports even if they're not entering China yet when I got off my flight from LHR a large Boeing 777-300ER at least another large aircraft arrived at the same time containing many transit passengers. Despite there being at least 400 passengers only TWO immigration counters were open. Luckily I didn't have a 1 hour connection time and wasn't one of the last passengers. Worse still there was no queue guidance systems such as 'snake' lines that have rapidly improved the situation at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi. On top of that facilities aren't great and sign-posting for facilities like money changers are poor at the best of times. Also on my flight from SIN to LHR via PEK I had a 6 hour transit so I paid for lounge access but on the whole it was a waste of money with no western food save for tasteless sandwiches and biscuits. To sum up China's government really needs to improve this airport and make it more foreigner friendly if it is to improve its image. Until that day comes do not transit here unless you have a long connection time of over 2 hours and even then its only worthwhile if the cost-saving is substantial.