NEWS FLASH
Pristina Airport opened four brand new boarding gates on Monday, bringing its terminal’s total to twelve. As previously reported, the three-million-euro terminal expansion involved the construction of four new bus gates, two each on the southern and northern tips of the existing facility. Each annex, stretching over 648 square metres, features two gates, a seating area, smoking room, and restrooms. The project was fully funded by airport operator Limak. Pristina Airport is expected to handle over four million passengers this year.
12 gates is really not much, an airport that size should have 20. SJJ has 8 with less than 2M passengers and will start working on constructing more in a few months.
ReplyDeleteI travel very often from PRN, but I never saw any problems at the gates. The biggest problem at PRN are the check in desks
DeleteAh yes, don't forget the smoking room
ReplyDelete13:48 not every airport would build extra smoking rooms for 2 gates. This is especially needed in the Balkans :)
DeleteYou're working under a wrong assumption.
DeleteThese boarding gates are on the ground level. There are additional boarding gates that already exist. So, these smoking rooms are for both the existing gates and the new gates. Smokers would currently need to be quite far away from these gates, so if you can bring them closer to their boarding gates then it releases the pressure from the existing smooking room, while also ensuring faster boarding on the ground level.
PRN has already reached its passenger limit. An extra 1.280m2 will not help much in the long run.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they waiting for the concession to end in 5 years time and negotiate a new deal.
Yes, this year the terminal should reach its capacity on paper. However, the airport can and must work "overcapacity" while trying to even out the number of flights throughout the day. There are very quiet hours even in high season, for example today there were no departures between 06:00 and 08:00 hours. Then certain days, Tuesday coming to mind first, that are usually very quiet.
DeleteLimak's concession does not end until 2031, so not for another 7 years or so, but I don't see any further major investments from them into the terminal. Would I would like and expect to see from them is continuous improvement of the quality of operation. Yes, Limak significantly improved the quality of service from the time when it took over the operation of the airport, but there is much room for improvement.
It would be interesting to see if they will consider opening the old terminal to passengers and turn it into a low-cost airline terminal, much like Bordeaux has Billi, for example. Unless the Government invests its own money into adding additional jet bridges, I see Limak only focusing on increasing the returns on their investment that now stands at 150M EUR.
Sure it can operate above capacity, however I was referring to the future, in the long run.
DeleteReactivating the old Terminal sounds interesting but shifting the lowcost and reiseburo flights to there makes little sense. The old Terminal has no more than 6.000m2 and it certainly cannot accomodate that influx.
Limak does not have enough time left in its concession to get a return on its investment for a major long-term future expansion. That is, unless it agrees to extend the concession with the government in return for such an expansion.
DeleteI mentioned the old terminal simply because I think that *if* the existing terminal really struggles in to cope with the number of passengers in the next 5-6 years then I think Limak would rather reopen the old terminal if its cheaper than making a larger investment into expanding the existing terminal or building a new one.
In case you were not aware, the old terminal handles 1.5 million passengers annually. And Limak is claiming that adding these 4 new boarding gates has expanded the capacity of the terminal to handle another 1.2 million passengers annually.
limit? I had to use PRN because my SKP flight was cancelled and every flight from FMM to SKP was full and to my surprise the airport looked pretty empty, both on dep and arr :)
Deletei noticed the reconstruction works