Portugal's Prime Minister, António Costa, is booked to inaugurate the expansion of Faro airport this coming Monday, July 17th.
The new-style airport has been designed to handle 12 million passengers a year and will have cost Vinci Airports just over €35 million.
ANA, owned by Vinci, states that all passenger arrivals, with the curious exception of Jet2’s, are now using the new transit and processing systems, with arrivals “almost completely normalised.”
The works was meant to have been completed in March this year, with a later extension to “June or July, changed again to “this summer” by the Minister for Infrastructure, Pedro Marquês.
As this development work is privately funded and thus actually will be completed, the António Costa government is keen to ally itself with the opening and earlier promised that the expansion will be a great boost for the regional economy.
The same government has remained tight-lipped over its failure to finish even the first part of the EN125 roadworks programme, now on hold for a second summer season, but did make a statement about the long-awaited rail link to Faro airport, “it won’t happen.”
The remodelled airport has the capacity to process up to 12 million passengers annually. Last year the airport processed 7,632,857 passengers - an increase of 18.5% compared to 2015.
The terminal's loading and unloading capacity is now 3,000 people per hour, up from 2,400, but despite all the work and disruption, the terminal has only expanded to 93,120 m2 from 81,200 m2.
The terminal will be able to cater for 30 aircraft movements per hour, instead of the current 24, and now can cope with 37 parked aircraft at any one time.
The security areas and the commercial areas of the airport also have been enlarged and reformulated and the Security Control now has space for 17 queues, up from 11.
The key to the effective performance of these facilities is personnel and it remains to be seen whether police, border control and baggage handling capabilities will increase to fill the new space.
