It has often been said that airports are like building sites. The truth is that as aviation expands facilities that were considered adequate no more than a few years earlier quickly find themselves too small and require development. Amongst many others Heathrow and Dubai are in the expansion mode. Paris is undergoing a re-vamp and expansion whilst in recent times there have been major updates at Newark, Munich and Kennedy to name but three. However entirely new major hubs are quite rare, Osaka, Hong Kong and Macau coming into this category in the last decade, and also London City back in 1987.
Whether the new Qatar International Airport, formally announced in London last November, should be classified as ””new” or ”expanded” is open for discussion but at a cost of US$2.5bn for the first stage alone it certainly is big. The plan in Doha is to build a completely new airport eastwards from the present site, actually into the Arabian Gulf. The existing facility will disappear into Doha City whilst a parallel runway mega airport will emerge over the next five years with an eventual long term capacity for 50m annually. In the short term the current 4.5m terminal will be upgraded to a 7.5m capacity. The plans call for three major stages of development. Phase one 12m operational by 2008 or early 2009. The mid-term phase calls for 24m passengers and the final phase has an ultimate capacity of 50m. To put it all in perspective Gatwick is currently a 30m passenger airport, and Heathrow 60m, the top international airport but behind three massive US hubs. Dubai, easily the most commercially aggressive of the Emirate states has just posted a figure of 18m passengers for 2003.
US-based construction and engineering company Bechtel has just completed the Doha International Airport Masterplan with tenders for the first phase expected to go out shortly. BAE Systems will be advisor to Qatar Airways during the Masterplan development. Detailed design work will continue throughout 2004 and 2005 as the site is reclaimed and prepared. Construction of the new airport”s major facilities will begin from 2006.
Managing the whole development is the charismatic Akbar Al Baker, chief executive officer of Qatar Airways (and the airport company too), a very much ”hands on” operator with a sharp eye for detail.
When asked about the great deal of walking characteristic of recent airport developments he gave an assurance that this would not be so with Doha. ”That will not be the case. Walking will be minimum”, he said. ”We want our new gateway to be a showcase for Qatar. The airport will be the hub for Qatar”s flag carrying airline. It will be critical to the ambitions of Qatar Airways to become a global airline. The new airport will allow us to offer our passengers fast and efficient connections as we build a route network of over 60 destinations by 2005.”
The statistics for the new facility are mind-boggling. They include reclaiming nearly 50% of the site from the sea with 46m square metres of fill. Building two parallel runways, one of 4,850m capable of taking a fully laden A380-800 and a second one 4,250m. There will be a 130,000 square metre three-storey terminal with 24 gates, two of which will cater to the A380-800. The terminal will have a 100-room hotel for transit passengers and more than 25,000 square metres of retail facilities. Amongst other works planned is an aircraft maintenance centre with hangars that can accommodate two A380-800s and three A-340s at any one time. Mr Al Baker said that the new Doha International Airport would be the first to be designed and built specifically for the Airbus A380-800. Qatar has two A380 on order.
http://www.qatarairways.com