Colombia’s civil aviation authority on Tuesday announced the commissioning of an official study to improve the poor operational capacity of Bogota’s El Dorado airport.
Aviation authority Aerocivil, in conjunction with the national airline industry, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and the trade ministry, have commissioned a study of El Dorado airport to find ways to maximize operational capacity, in order to better serve ever increasing flight demand from both national and international customers.
The president of the Colombian Association of Air Transport, Manuel Leal Angarita, stated that the main problem stems from the delays planes face for landing, which are estimated to be around 20 minutes. “This agreement will contribute to the efficiency and improvement in the management in air traffic, to what we colloquially call a traffic jam wherein you have a six lane highway which merges into two lanes upon arriving at Bogota airport,” said Angarita.
The airport experienced a 17.6% increase in traffic over the first trimester of 2013 in comparison to the same period in 2012. That’s an increase of 992,000 customers, bringing the total number of passengers who passed through El Dorado airport in the first three months of 2013 to over 6.6 million. Evidently, it is clear why authorities are concerned over operational bottlenecks.
The director of Aerocivil, Santiago Castro, said that if the study increases the airport’s efficiency by as little as 5%, it could result in an increase of as many as 50 “operations” per day. “We must look to increase capacity of El Dorado airport, to serve [customers] better, reduce delays, generate higher flow and optimize the traffic on the runway,” said Castro.
The study will be carried out over a period of 18 months, and is the latest initiative by authorities to improve the capacity and efficiency of Bogota’s airport. In late April it was announced that a nearby military airbase would be moved over the next five years in order to expand El Dorado airport.
MORE: Colombia to move military airbase to expand El Dorado airport
According to travel agency eDreams, the airport scored fourth worst on their yearly ranking based on thousands of reviews from customers passing through airports around the world in 2012.
MORE: Bogota’s El Dorado ranked among world’s worst airports