New airport terminal gets off to an early start
Getting off to an early start has been the order of the day for the new Terminal 3 on the first full day after it’s inauguration. It was officially opened yesterday by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Thirty flights and 3,700 passengers went through it in its first 12 hours.
The director of the airport, Mario Otero, confirmed that a total of 48 flights leaving, 33 left from the new terminal from 12 midnight until 11.30am. The first flight operated by Spanair, left for Barcelona and the first arrival was a helicopter operating a service from Ceuta to Malaga at 8.05am. A total of 5.400 passengers have come through the two terminals now operating in the last twelve hours with T3 dealing with around 70% of that total; he also confirmed that they expect the busiest day to be Sunday.
Today has been a good practice run in expectation of the traffic expected during the Easter period, says Otero. The good news is that they haven´t received one complaint, all the enquiries at the customer services desks have been the ones they expected on the first day; where is the check in, where do the flights leave from, etc.
There will be more staff manning the check in desks, departure points and access doors until after the Easter period.
The King and Queen of Spain officially opened the terminal yesterday which offers a bigger area and access to more shops and restaurants for those using the facilities. It covers an area of 250.000 square metres and will have an operating capacity of 30 million passengers per year – 9.000 passengers per hour as opposed to the 4.500 it could cope with before, 180 check-in desks, 48 boarding gates, 14.000 suitcases per hour and 3.700 parking spaces. The next step to improve the airport is the construction of a second runway which should be operating by the end of 2011 and will increase daily arrivals and departures from 37 to 60 flights.
Not only has the number of passengers increased but the T3 has more parking spaces and shops and includes the first National Geographic shop ever to open in any airport in the world.
Malaga is the main airport in Andalucia and the fourth most important in Spain as regards number of passengers and handles 62% of all air traffic in the region.
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