Airports of Thailand (AOT) is seeking final approval to begin work on a US$2 billion second phase expansion of Suvarnabhumi airport to lift passenger handling capacity to 65 million travelers a year. The first phase of the airport was designed to serve 45 million passengers annually, and actual traffic at the airpor
Airports of Thailand (AOT) is seeking final approval to begin work on a US$2 billion second phase expansion of Suvarnabhumi airport to lift passenger handling capacity to 65 million travelers a year.
The first phase of the airport was designed to serve 45 million passengers annually, and actual traffic at the airport amounted to 48 million last year.
AOT earlier planned to start expansion construction next month and have it completed in 3 years.
The project includes a concourse with a useable area of 216,000 square meters and 28 adjacent aircraft parking bays, an additional aircraft parking area of 960,000 square meters, an underground passenger transport system and passenger terminal and airline office expansion.
AOT also plans to install an Advance Passenger Processing System (APPS) at a cost of $256 million. The system will allow immigration, customs, airport and airline officials to obtain passengers' profiles from their countries of origin and they will be able to check if passengers are blacklisted or banned from leaving a country.
The number of air passengers visiting AOT's airports nationwide rose by 4.2% and the number of visiting flights increased by 13.2% year-on-year in this fiscal year. From last October to May AOT airports served 60.34 million passengers and 419,363 flights.