"Revamped Madrid airport sees itself as Europe's Atlantic gate"

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Revamped Madrid airport sees itself as Europe's Atlantic gate
Agence France-Presse


MADRID, (AFP) - Madrid's international Barajas airport is positioning itself
as Europe's Atlantic gate after it undergoes a revamp which will double its
capacity.

Already, the airport is the hub for about 25 percent of all flights from
Europe to Latin America and the construction of a new terminal and two new
runways should give a new lease of life of more than 15 years to Barajas
which would otherwise have reached saturation point soon.

"In terms of capacity, Madrid airport is to become one of the top three in
Europe," says Jose Manuel Hesse, overseeing construction of the new
futuristic-style terminal comprising two parallel buildings.

The undulating, aluminium-covered roofs of the first building are
attention-grabbing in themselves as they resemble "the flapping wings of a
seagull", in the words of a spokesman for Spain's Aena airport authority.

Bamboo brought in from China covers the immense ceiling held up by steel
supports and painted in a range of colours. The warmest tones have been
reserved for the northern section, the work of British architect Richard
Rogers and Antonio Lamela of Spain.

Metallic panels filter sunlight through the large bay windows into the wide
halls of the new fourth terminal, set to come on stream in September 2005.
By then, the airport will be able to handle about 70 million passangers,
double today's capacity.

The new installations at Barajas, 13 kilometres (nine miles) northeast of
Madrid, will also virtually double plane parking capacity from a current 110
to more than 200.

The new runways, equipped with low visibility take off and landing
technology, will take the total to four and afford the airport some of the
most modern facilities in the world with two jets able henceforth to take
off and two more to land simultaneously.

A new computerised system will be introduced for the terminal and baggage
handling will be completely automated.

A thorny issue has been the 4.7-billion-euro (six-billion-dollar) cost of
the project. The Socialist government recently revised an initial cost
forecast which was a billion euros less but members of the conservative
government ousted last March insist that their figures were bona fide.

In addition, Aena and Spanish national carrier Iberia are at loggerheads
over the distribution of aircraft parking places at the new terminal.

Initially, the idea was to be reserved for Iberia and its partners within
the Oneworld alliance. The former government then stepped in and decided to
allow the rival Star Alliance to have a share of the spaces.


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