Weeks before its opening the Hong Kong International Airport is already a huge attraction.

Completed on time and under budget, Hong Kong's biggest single engineering project is attracting crowds before the first commercial flight has landed. Thousands of people have taken advantage of the Airport Authority's series of open days and the Hong Kong Tourist Association is running popular guided weekday tours until mid-June.

It is no wonder that an as yet unused airport is attracting so much attention for, even before it opens, it is a study in superlatives.

The futuristic Y-shaped terminal building is l.3 kilometres long and will have a total area of 516,000 square metres, increasing to 550,000 square metres by the end of this year. The roof of the terminal is equivalent to roofing over London's Soho district.

So long is the terminal that an automatic, driverless train, running on rubber tyres and concrete tracks, will take passengers to the furthest of the more than 80 departure gates. This will be augmented by 54 moving walkways, 102 lifts, 63 escalators and 8,000 luggage trolleys. Passengers not on the move will be able to rest in one of the 12,500 lounge seats and check their flight details on one of 2,000 display screens.

The nine levels of terminal include 288 check-in counters capable of handling 13,680 pieces of luggage an hour while 12 luggage reclaim carousels will be able to handle 20,000 pieces of luggage an hour.

Once they have checked in, passengers can shop at any of the 141 retail outlets, including 25 serving food and drinks. The shops are in 30,000 square-metre shopping mall and will offer shopping and dining at down-town prices.

The terminal building is the focal point of the six-kilometre-long, 3.5-kilometre-wide man-made island of Chep Lap Kok on which the l,248 hectare Hong Kong International Airport stands.

It is roughly equivalent to creating an airport with the same area as London's Heathrow in the sea. One of the world's largest earth moving operations, it involved 2,500 workers from 13 countries moving 10 tonnes of rock soil, mud and marine sand every second around the clock for 31 months. At the height of the operation more than half the world's total dredging tonnage was working in Hong Kong.

Site preparation began in late 1992 and was completed in June l995. The site completion enabled work to start on more than 50 contracts worth US$4.7 billion awarded by the Airport Authority for the construction of the runway, terminal and cargo and other buildings and services.

Impressive as it is, the airport is just one of 10 major projects in the Airport Core Programme (ACP) one of the biggest civil engineering projects in the world.

The other projects included the Tung Chung New Town next to the airport. Already home to 15,000 people, this modern self contained township will eventually have a population of 250,000. The airport and Tung Chung are connected to the urban centres of Hong Kong by the North Lantau Expressway and the Airport Railway, also ACP projects. They make use of another, the spectacular Tsing Ma Bridge, one of the world's longest suspension bridges, which connects Lantau Island to the urban centres by way of the Route Three road project and the West Kowloon Expressway. The expressway and the railway cross the West Kowloon Reclamation another ACP project. These are connected with Hong Kong Island by the Western Harbour Crossing, a tunnel that links up with the Central Reclamation on which stands the Airport Railway Terminal and city check-in for the airport.

Passengers will be able to check in the luggage at this terminal in the Central Business District, be issued with their boarding cards, take the Airport Railway and 23 minutes later will be at the airport itself ready to board their flight.

Massive as each of these 10 projects are, they have all been completed on time and under budget. When work started in 1992, the total cost was estimated at HK$163.7 billion (US$21 billion). The latest cost estimate is HK$155.3 billion (US$20 billion) a saving of five per cent on a very large figure.

Although the new airport terminal was completed in April it was decided to begin commercial operations on 6 July, to coincide with the opening of the Airport Railway, which will take passengers to and from the airport in comfortable purpose-built trains in only 23 minutes.

For those who choose not to make the 23 minute rail trip there will be plenty of other options by road. The airport terminal will have more than 3,000 parking spaces, 24 taxi-loading bays, 18 pick-up bays for tour coaches and 17 public bus bays. The trip by road to Hong Kong Central will take about 40 minutes.

Efficient transport services to and from the airport are essential for they will have to move an army of people each day. When it opens, the airport will be able to handle 35 million passengers a year. Eventually, it will have a capacity of 87 million a year.

Ultra-modern facilities have been installed not just to handle passengers but air-freight as well. Hong Kong is the world's third busiest international passenger terminal, but it is also the world's busiest air cargo terminal. When the new Hong Kong International Airport opens on 6 July it will be able to handle three million tonnes of air freight a year. Eventually it will be able to handle nine million tonnes a year.

The bulk of this cargo will move through the US$1 billion Super Terminal 1, the world's largest air cargo facility. Built by Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminal Ltd. (HACTL) it will handle up to 2.6 million tonnes of cargo a year, or about 85 per cent of the airport's opening capacity.

Super Terminal 1, occupying a 17-hectare site has a six-storey main building with a total floor area of 274,500 square metres and a two storey Express Centre providing a further 46,000 square metres of floor space.

To prepare for a smooth opening the airport has already been put through its paces. Test landings of aircraft are taking place, hundreds of people have acted as passengers in exercises to test the facilities, and there have been air disaster drills to test emergency services.

It is not only members of the public and tourists who are attracted to the airport before it opens. In February 6,100 runners pounded the tarmac of the 3,800 metre runway in a charity 10 kilometre run. It was the biggest amateur sporting event ever held in Hong Kong. Several hundred hardier souls got to the airport the hard way by running a full 42.2 kilometre marathon, across the Tsing Ma Bridge and up the North Lantau Expressway to the airport terminal.

When the airport opens there will be glamour aplenty in the terminal as stewardesses from the world's airlines arrive and depart, not to mention the film stars and models who are frequent visitors to Hong Kong. The airport got its first taste of glamour on 6 June when the finals of the Miss Hong Kong Pageant were held in the terminal building.

Before it is opened the airport is already providing a big attraction. After it is opened it will consolidate Hong Kong's pre-eminent place as the air transport hub of the region.