THE Terminal 1 building at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport will fully reopen on Monday after a three-year renovation.

The new T1 includes China’s first self-service check-in that allows passengers to print tickets, check in luggage and board without queuing at staffed counters.

“Self-service has become a trend among international airports to shorten the check-in and boarding process,” said Dai Xiaojian, vice president of the Shanghai Airport Authority.

The T1 building will primarily be a base for Spring Airlines and a number of other carriers operating charter flights to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as well as to Japan and South Korea.

The airport authority launched the renovation in December 2014 after decades of operation. Part of the building was reopened in March 2017.

The airport authority has placed 28 self-service check-in machines in the D section of the T1 building. Passengers can scan passports or identity cards on the machines to receive both their boarding cards and luggage tags.

They then place their luggage on one of 18 loading machines at the airline’s counters, said Zhang Zheng, general manager with the airport service department of the budget carrier.

Six staffed counters are available for those who cannot use the self-service machines, he added.

Facial recognition technology is used to check the passenger against their passport or ID card.

This will decrease the wait for a security check to 12 seconds, said Zhang.

Security checks with X-rays will still be conducted manually.

The renovated terminal also has 11 additional toilets, nine nursing rooms and 10 accessible toilets, said Xu Zhengning, an official with the Hongqiao airport.

Parking bays have been increased to 1,250 from the original 700. And flood prevention systems have also been improved, Xu said.

The Hongqiao airport was first built in 1921 with only a soil runway. Its first flight between Shanghai and Nanjing in neighboring Jiangsu Province was in 1929.

Last year, the Hongqiao airport handled some 41.9 million domestic and international passengers and was ranked seventh among domestic airports.