Cairo International Airport has closed one of its three terminals for renovation, Amirah Ibrahim reports It seems that Egypt's main gateway; Cairo International, will remain the object of renovation work for a while to come. The airport's terminal TB1 has been renovated, yet more face-lift operations are being undertaken to the old building. A new state of the art terminal had been inaugurated early last year that took the airport's capacity from 9 million passengers per annum to 20 million. Now it is time to start renovating Terminal 2, which Egyptians used to call "the New Airport". Early this week, the management of Cairo Airport Company decided to shut down TB2 to allow an ambitious plan to upgrade it to come into effect. The upgrade and renovation project is estimated to cost $400 million, partially financed by the World Bank, which is providing $280 million of the total cost, with national banks providing the rest. According to Ibrahim Manna, head of the Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation, the project is due to be completed within 36 months and will expand the terminal's current capacity from 3.5 to 7.5 million passengers per annum. "This will take the total capacity of Cairo International airport to 24 million passengers per annum," Manaa explained. Constructed in 1985, TB2 served over the past 25 years as the main terminal for European and some Arab carriers, being equipped with passengers tubes connected to departure and arrival halls. The old terminal used to be allocated for the national carrier, EgyptAir, which had the most traffic, shared by some small airliners. Things changed, and the national carrier moved to the new terminal TB3 which joined the service last year and had been allocated to EgyptAir and its sister airlines at the Star Alliance. The carrier moved all its flights to TB3 and thus the old TB1 was ready to replace TB2. "All the 34 airliners that used to operate from TB2 have been transferred to TB1. The last was Saudi Airlines. It will now use TB1's hall 2 as the carrier operates 65 per cent of the traffic that moved from TB2," explained Manna. TB1 has been provided with 50 luggage counters in the departure hall, modern IT systems and extra kiosks and offices for airlines agents. "As for the renovation project, TB2 halls are to be enlarged, adding spaces connecting it to TB3. Passenger tubes will be doubled from seven at present to 14 so as to meet the targeted expansion of traffic," he added. On completing the renovation work, TB2 will be connected directly to TB3 through a three floor bridge which will allow tranist passengers to transfer through TB3's three floors.
