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Monday, June 23, 2008 The airport with an X factor
New Dubai hub to handle up to 120 million
passengers a year
By Aude Lagorce MarketWatch DUBAI
(MarketWatch) -- Dubai doesn't do small. The
world's tallest tower, largest mall, longest bridge -- it has them all, or will
soon. The new airport complex, under construction about 40 kilometers (25
miles) southwest of old Dubai, is no exception. At 140
square kilometers (54 square miles), the land set aside by former Dubai ruler
Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum 30 years ago for the visionary $33 billion
urban aviation project is almost twice the size of the island of Hong Kong. The
heart of this new city, known as Dubai World Central, will be the Al Maktoum
International airport. Upon completion, it will be the world's largest airport,
bigger than London's Heathrow and Chicago's O'Hare combined. "It's
not just an airport, it's a whole new concept," Abdulla Ahmed Al Qurashi,
the head of DWC's aviation division, told MarketWatch in an interview. Dubai
takes flight The sheer
dimensions of the $10 billion Al Maktoum airport are difficult to convey. It
will have two huge terminals, six concourses, six parallel runways and a
smaller terminal for low-cost and regional airlines. The terminals and
concourses will be linked by a light railway system. To give
potential partners and investors an idea of what the new airport, and the whole
city around it, will look like, DWC has built large models of the project at
its headquarters. They are neat and orderly, all perpendicular streets lined
with palm trees and pastel-toned buildings. At Al Maktoum, the lights are
flashing on the runways and miniature helicopters are on standby on a dozen
helipads. The planes are barely an inch long on a model several meters wide. The
airport will eventually have an annual capacity of about 120 million passengers
and 12 million tons of cargo. London's Heathrow airport, the world's busiest
international airport, handles about 68 million passengers annually. Memphis
and Hong Kong, the world's top cargo hubs, deal with about 4.5 million tons of
cargo each year. Although
operations won't be in full swing at Al Maktoum until 2015, parts of the
project are already well underway. The first runway, aerial control tower and
fuel tanks are finished and the first passenger flight is expected next year. A
low-cost terminal that will be home to Dubai's new budget carrier should be
ready in the third quarter of 2009. The new
airport, executives say, is essential for Dubai to deal with a predicted surge
in air travel. The
International Air Transport Association sees average passenger growth in the
Middle East of 6.8% a year until 2011. European aircraft maker Airbus,
meanwhile, predicts that passenger traffic in the region will increase by 8.1%
a year until 2016, compared with a global average growth of 5.4%. At its
heart though, DWC is much more than an aviation project. It will
"not only impact future airports around the world, but also regional
economic development," DWC Executive Chairman Khalifa Al Zaffin told the
audience of the Future Airports Congress in Dubai in early June. Industry
analysts agreed the region approaches its airports differently. "The
development and financing of airports in the Gulf does not follow the same
pattern as airports in the rest of the world. In Dubai for instance we're
talking about a wider economic development plan of which the airport is an
essential part," said Christopher Preece, managing director of U.K.-based
Falcon Consultancy. Many firms
involved At Al
Maktoum, the opportunity for airport infrastructure and equipment specialists
is enormous. While the
runway was built by the UAE's Al Naboodah, international contractors are
heavily represented. The first terminal, which will cater to 7 million
passengers, is the responsibility of a joint venture between the UAE's Arabtec
and Germany's Max Bogl, while France's Thales and the U.K.'s Park Air Systems
are providing the navigational aids package. U.S.-based Raytheon Co. has been
selected for the instrument landing system. A visit to
the site reveals construction continuing at an unabated pace. Roughly 20,000
workers are toiling by 100-degree heat under the leadership of 600 engineers to
transform tasteful models into reality. The scale of the job hits with one
360-look at the site. In every direction, as far as the eye can see: sand,
rocks, pits and dunes. The issues
confronting workers, planners and engineers are as exotic as the climate: The
runway must be fenced to prevent camels and antelope from crossing it at night.
An indigenous Ghaf tree, which has stood undisturbed in the middle of the
desert for 200 years, now finds itself in the middle of a construction site.
Its longevity is such a rare occurrence in this harsh climate that it's been
uprooted and moved to a conservation park. Desert wildlife, consisting mainly
of birds, snakes and rabbits, must be relocated. The desert
landscape also means a special chemical will have to be sprayed onto the sand
to prevent it from scattering and hampering visibility on takeoff and landing. Around the
airport, five more developments are planned. Residential City and Golf City
will house the bulk of the 900,000 people expected to live and work at DWC
while Commercial City, roughly the size of Manhattan, will be home to various
firms and businesses and likely become the financial center of the development.
Logistics
City will take advantage of its proximity to the existing Jebel Ali port and
free zone, making sea to air connectivity achievable in less than 4 hours. Although
construction is just starting on Logistics City, Al Qurashi said international
firms are already jostling to reserve lots to build warehouses. Nearly 50,
including Swiss logistics giant Panalpina Other
airports getting a face lift Although
Al Maktoum will dwarf other airports in the region, many are expanding their
facilities and undergoing facelifts. Dubai neighbor Abu Dhabi plans a revamp
that will increase its airport's capacity to 40 million passengers a year.
Meanwhile, Qatar's Doha International Airport will be able to handle 50 million
passengers in 2020. Ultimately,
some industry experts said, most of the United Arab Emirates' airports could be
linked. There are already plans for a light rail to link DWC and the existing
Dubai International Airport. "At
the beginning there's always lots of competition, but I think at the end we
will have one main UAE airline and one main airport," said Diogenis
Papiomytis, consultant in the aerospace and defense practice of Frost &
Sullivan. |
