The city of Bogota needs to add a third runway to Eldorado international airport and create an alternative airport, the director of Colombia’s air transportation authority said Tuesday.
Santiago Castro, the director of Civil Aeronautics, explained that the air transit authority is “going to hire an independent consultant that is going to give us possible sites for the construction of this airport and how we might direct this investment.”
Castro also explained that Bogota’s current international airport currently sees about 20 million passengers pass through annually, a number that he believes can be raised to 40 million in the future should the airport decide to add a third runway.
Fabio Villegas, the president of Avianca, echoed the concern of Castro that the Eldorado airport was built to handle 16 million passengers a year, but its current annual volume is nearly 20 million.
The Civil Aeronatics director announced that the transportation authority is conducting a study to investigate the options for expanding Eldorado airport.
“We have a little more than a decade to make that decision, what worries us is that when they make the decision the properties could not be available because the territorial arrangements of the municipalities around Bogota make it impossible for this development, so we want to be responsible and want those areas to be available,” said Castro.
Eldorado is currently undergoing a massive modernization project that is scheduled to be finished in 2014.
