Owner Government of Angola Location Ícolo e Bengo Website enana.co.ao | Serves Luanda Elevation AMSL 522 ft / 159 m | |
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Operator Empresa Nacional de Exploração de Aeroportos e Navegação Aérea (ENANA) | ||
Angola International Airport (Aeroporto Internacional de Angola in Portuguese) is a major airport project on the way since 2004 near the Angolan capital of Luanda. The site is some 40 km southeast of the city center in the Bom Jesus commune in Ícolo e Bengo municipality in the Luanda Province and will be an alternative to the existing Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport. Construction of the new airport is in the hands of a consortium of Chinese companies and Brazilian company Odebrecht. The first phase of the project was completed even in 2012 and the opening was originally scheduled for 2015/2016 but in 2014 it was reported that it would not open until mid-2017.
Design and construction
The new airport is designed for around 13 million passengers per year and will receive 12 fingerdocks. The construction company is China International Fund, which was founded in Hong Kong in 2003. The Chinese have also built a large new construction village named Vila Chinesa, meaning "Chinese village", with accommodation for workers and materials depots, east of Luanda in Viana. Since the end of the civil war in 2002, the pace of economic growth in Angola has accelerated. To link the increasing international business with the rest of the world and to secure the drastic increase in logistics networks in Angola, the construction of a new, large international airport was necessary.
The modern passenger terminal occupies 160 000 square metres of land and the cargo terminal is 6 200 square metres in size and would have a capacity of 35 000 tonnes of cargo per year. Two runways will be built. The northern runway is 4 200 meters long, while the southern runway will be 3 800 meters long, both measuring 60 meters in width. The date of commissioning was scheduled for 2010, but will be delayed considerably. Construction work was suspended at the end of 2007, due to financial revaluation by the Angolan government. The construction costs, which are pre-financed entirely by China, will be around US$ 3,8 billion (2015).
The total area of the airport will be at least 50 square-kilometers, while other complementary infrastructure, such as shops, hangars, restaurants, offices, the construction of a hotel near the airport, are not included. The project also includes the construction of a rail link to the capital, to the province of Luanda, and possibly to the neighboring province of Malanje. In order to ensure a road connection to Luanda the existing road from Luanda to Malange has to be considerably enlarged. Due to its present insufficient width this road is almost constantly blocked by traffic jams.
The project is staffed almost exclusively by Chinese workers, which caused protests by the local population at the start of the construction. This led to occasional riots, with the police and military having to intervene to calm down the situation. Angolans are facing Chinese practice at a disadvantage and asked to be complicit in the construction work.
