The annual passenger volume of the Beijing Capital International Airport exceeded 70 million on Tuesday, and the figure is expected to reach 80 million by the end of 2012, the airport said on Tuesday.

BCIA is the second-busiest airport worldwide since 2010, after the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which has 88 million annual passengers.

It took 35 years for the BCIA to improve its annual volume to 10 million, but it only took two years to go from 70 million to 80 million, Li Xiaomei, a BCIA spokeswoman told the Beijing Morning Post.

In order to improve efficiency, the BCIA built up a special team for luggage transport. The time it takes to transport luggage was cut by 10 percent in the first half of 2012, compared with the same period of 2011, the paper reported.

Last year, the annual passenger volume of the BCIA was 78,675,058 and its income was 6.5 billion yuan ($1.04 billion).

wangwen@chinadaily.com.cn