JKIA ARRIVALS BUILDING TO BE DEMOLISHED
(Posted 22nd January 2014)
Details are emerging of plans by the Kenya Airport Authority to demolish the burned out arrivals building at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, which suffered irreparable damage during a major fire in August last year.
KAA invited tenders earlier this week, seeking to contract a suitably qualified company to demolish the building and clear the site before then embarking on constructing a new state of the art arrival complex meeting the requirements of modern day aviation and allowing for Cat 1 ranking by the FAA, a prerequisite for eventually launching direct flights to and from the United States.
The fire, while a disaster of the highest order, which brought air traffic in and out of Kenya’s and the region’s most important aviation hub to a standstill for nearly two days, before traffic over gradually resumed over several days before reaching some level of normality, is now seen as a catalyst to accelerate the modernization of the airport. The construction of the long delayed Terminal Four was cranked up to around the clock work schedules and a new temporary terminal will be assembled to help process the sharply grown number of in particular transit passengers, which use Kenya Airways to fly from across Africa via Nairobi and vice versa to their final destinations. President Kenyatta in December broke ground for the new ‘Project Greenfield’ which will see the construction of a second runway, new taxiways, aprons and aircraft parking spaces and most important a new mega terminal which will more than triple the airport’s capacity to over 20 million passengers per year.
Demolition, according to a regular source from JKIA, is due to be completed by middle of this year before construction of the new arrival wing with offices and a range of other state of the art facilities will begin.
(An impression of the expanded Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi)
