Usual share of Day 1 gremlins at Beijing's colossal Terminal 3

The world's biggest building, Terminal 3 at the Beijing Capital International Airport, opened for business yesterday with passengers arriving to some missing signs, dirty toilets and empty shops.

But passengers seemed mostly forgiving of the first-day glitches, expressing how impressed they were by the structure's scale and appearance.

The terminal's immense floor area, equivalent to 170 soccer pitches, and extravagant design integrating Chinese elements greeted passengers boarding and arriving on six domestic and international carriers - Shandong Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, British Airways, Qatar Airways, Israel's El Al and Australia's Qantas.

Cathy Pacific, Dragonair and Macau airlines are scheduled to move into the new terminal on March 26 together with 17 other major international carriers.

The wait may be worth it for travellers on these later airlines, given the teething problems of the first day of formal operation.

A road sign declaring 'new commencement' was erected along the airport expressway to remind passengers to double-check their departure terminal numbers.

'But the characters are so small, and the sentence is so long that if I focus on reading the whole instruction while driving at 100km/h, I could end up in a car crash,' said Zhang Jian , who was catching a flight to Chongqing .