An auxiliary terminal to improve efficiency at Shanghai Pudong International Airport opened on Monday, bringing the city closer to becoming a global aviation hub, said officials from the airport authority.

Located south of the airport's existing terminal 1 and terminal 2, the 620,000-square-meter satellite hall has 90 boarding gangways and is expected to handle 60 to 70 percent of the airport's flights.

Hu Zhihong, general manager of the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, said it will greatly enhance the airport's boarding, as only about 10 percent of passengers will need to take shuttle buses.

Ye Yuquan, a deputy general manager with China Eastern Airlines' ground service division, said only about 35 percent of the airline's flights at Pudong International Airport can access boarding gangways.

"The new satellite terminal is expected to enable us to increase that figure to 100 percent," Ye said.

It is the world's largest single-building satellite terminal.

Italian passenger Andrea Angelici departed on the first international flight from the new satellite terminal to Rome.

"It is one of the best I have visited," he said.

A mass rapid transit system moves passengers between Pudong's two terminals and the satellite terminal, with a one-way trip between terminal 1 and the satellite terminal taking a mere 2.5 minutes, according to Feng Xin, president of Shanghai Airport Authority.

The third phase of the expansion of Shanghai Pudong International Airport began more than three years ago and is expected handle 38 million passenger trips a year, raising the annual capacity of the airport to 80 million trips, said Guo Jianxiang, vice-president of East China Architectural Design & Research Institute who led a more than 100-member design team for the satellite terminal.

According to Guo, the satellite terminal was designed to help Pudong International Airport meet the needs of the increasing number of air passengers and to improve efficiency in flight transfers.

The H-shaped satellite terminal puts a priority on practical use and customer experience. "At the same time, it also features a mixture of Shanghai taste and international diversification," added Guo.

Together with the satellite terminal, Shanghai's two airports can handle 120 million passenger trips and 5.2 million metric tons of cargo per year, said Xie Feng, head of the Shanghai Transport Commission.

The satellite terminal has more than 28,000 square meters of commercial space, of which nearly 10,000 sq m are duty free zone.

According to Xie, the Yangtze River Delta regional airport master plan is still pending central government approval, but Shanghai will strive to enhance the development of the Shanghai international aviation hub together with airports in cities including Nanjing of Jiangsu province, Hangzhou of Zhejiang province, Hefei of Anhui province, Nantong of Jiangsu province and Ningbo of Zhejiang province.

"The development of the city clusters in the Yangtze River Delta region requires the support of a comprehensive transportation system of air, railway, road and even water, both for passenger and cargo transportation," Xie said.

Passenger throughput of the Pudong International Airport and Hongqiao International Airport in Shanghai hit 118 million passenger trips in 2018, ranking fourth in the world for three consecutive years, while cargo throughput reached 4.18 million tons, ranking third for 11 consecutive years, according to the Shanghai Airport Authority statistics.