| Angola International Airport | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| IATA: none – ICAO: none | |||
| Summary | |||
| Serves | Luanda | ||
| Location | Ícolo e Bengo | ||
Angola International Airport[1] is a new major airport currently being built near the Angolan capital of Luanda. Under construction since 2008, it is some 40 km southeast of the city center in the Bom Jesus commune in Ícolo e Bengo municipality in the Bengo Province and is an alternative to the existing Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport.
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.[2] 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. The construction costs, which are pre-financed entirely by China, should be around 300 million US Dollars. Construction work was suspended at the end of 2007, due to financial revaluation by the Angolan government.
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.
Meantime, the Chinese enterprise stopped the works in 2010, when after the part of the earth-moving ended, because Angolan authorities did not keep on effectuating the payments owed by contract.