QUICK TAKES

Phase Two Of Tocumen Airport Expansion Underway

By Will Irvine

In October of last year President Ricardo Martinelli, delivered the order for Phase Two of the Expansion of Tocumen Airport to proceed. This expansion is being carried out by Aerotocumen who won the bid for this project while the bid for the plans was won by Planman Cia. Ltda. Work started immediately and the expansion is expected to be finished in early 2011.

This second phase of expansion for Tocumen International Airport includes building 12 new airplane positions at a cost of $68 million. It is actually a new docking hub for airports that will be able to serve 12 new aircraft simultaneously. The new positions added to the 22 existing ones will total 34 aircraft docking positions plus six remote docks.

These new installations will include the north dock, platforms, rolling strips, access roads, direct access to the cargo terminal and the airport administration building. This new docking hub will connect to the existing passenger terminal through its northwestern side and will 10 mobile walkways for passengers and one thousand 400 meters squared of space for commercial areas. The equipment management system will also be upgraded to provide passengers with better service. All these improvements are designed to allow the landing of the world's largest plane, the Airbus A380.

The capacity of the airport once phase two is finished will double. It will go from 5 million passengers a year that it currently handles to 10 million passengers once the new docking hub is finalized.

The actual physical work on the expansion is moving ahead however it has run into a legal snag as a project of this size by law requires that an independent company carry out inspection however the tender process for this part of the project was faulty so the bidding process was cancelled after the bids were received.

Every project opened up for bids by law must assign a minimum percentage of 30% to the price of the bid while the other 70% is divided at the entity's discretion in other aspects of the project such as technical, social, etc. The first bid tender had assigned 24.4% to the price.

In spite of this the construction is moving ahead and is currently being supervised by the staff of Tocumen itself. The new bids are already in and the lowest bid was offered by THE LOUIS BERGER GROUP with $1.16 million. By law all major projects must be supervised by a third party company so this bid should be awarded soon in other to comply with the rules of transparency in purchasing process that the government spouses.

It is worthwhile to note that Tocumen International Airport based on its expansions program and the new services it is able to offer passenger has decided to increase the exit tax to $40.00 starting on January 1, 2010. The cost of this tax will be included in the ticket purchase price. For tickets purchased previously passengers must pay at the airline counter.

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