Imam Khomeini Airport

 Imam Khomeini Airport Houman Heidari TTOM Airport Assessment Assignment M I T P o r t u g a l -­‐ C T I S Table of Contents Description ................................................................................................................................ 3 History of development ......................................................................................................... 3 Operations .................................................................................................................................. 5 Phase 1 ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Phases 2 & 3 ........................................................................................................................................ 6 Recommendations ................................................................................................................... 7 References .................................................................................................................................. 9 Appendix 1: Description of the airport ......................................................................... 10 Appendix 2: Maps of the airport ...................................................................................... 11 Appendix 3: plans of the Terminal .................................................................................. 12 Departure: ......................................................................................................................................... 12 Arrival: ............................................................................................................................................... 12 Transit: ............................................................................................................................................... 12 Appendix 4: Airlines operating in IKA ........................................................................... 13 Appendix 5: Airports in the Persian Gulf ...................................................................... 14 Appendix 6: Data ................................................................................................................... 15 2 Description Imam Khomeini International airport (IKA) is the largest Iranian airport built over an area of 13,500 hectares located 30 km southwest of Tehran, the Capital city of Iran. The airport has a capacity of 6.5 million passengers per year plus 120,000 tones of cargo P/A, and is connected to the Tehran-­‐Qom motorway via an airport access road. IKA has two runways with the following characteristics: Regarding the staff composition, 5435 employees are currently working in the airport (90% male, 10% female), 58% of them have a bachelor degree or equivalent, while 32% have a high school diploma, 8% are not graduated, 2% have a master degree and only 2 employees have a PhD. Moreover, 44% have a permanent contract, while 40% an interim contract, 13% a fixed term contract and 3% are daily workers. History of development The development of the airport began during the seventies when the Imperial government of Iran in agreement with its westerns partners has decided the build a new international airport in Tehran in order to make the city the main hub connecting Asia to the Western Europe and North America. The airport’s initial name was Ariamehr and the Imperial government of Iran had allocated a 1 billion US$ budget to the construction of the airport. TAMS-­‐AFFA, a joint venture gathering TAMS (a consortium of US designers) and Aziz FarmanFarmaian and Associates, has been formed in order to design and supervise the construction of the airport.1 This process has been stopped during the Iranian revolution and definitely cancelled after the revolution due to political issues. However, “the government of Iran decided to design and build the airport using local know-­‐how.” To do so, the authorities selected the French firm ADP “to head the local designers and engineering firms”. Kayson, a local general contractor, performed the process under a turnkey design and build infrastructure Delivery model. However, after two years, 1 The original design of the airport was based on Dallas Love Field 2 “Although no formal contract appeared to have been awarded. Soon later management of the 3 the contract “was abandoned and was awarded to a Bonyad, the Mostazafan & Janbazan (M&J Foundation), a public cartel”. Once the construction of the terminal was achieved, the authorities (Iranian Civil Aviation Organization) have decided to transfer the management of the operation as well as the construction of the second terminal to TAV (Tepe-­‐Akfen-­‐
Vie), consortium of two Turkish (Tepe and Akfen) and an Austrian (Vie) companies. However due to technical issues, the opening day have been postpone from February 11th 2004 to May 8th 2004. Then, “just prior to the opening on 8 May, two local airlines refused to switch to the new airport. Economic Hayat-­‐e No daily quoted Ali Abedzadeh, director of semi-­‐privately-­‐owned Iran Aseman Airlines, as saying "We are not flying from an airport run by foreigners”. As result of this action, “TAV officials were ordered to withdraw their personnel and equipment from the airport on 7 May 2004”, so Iran Air has assumed the operations of the airport. But, although the airport was now managed by Iran Air, on May 8th, “a few hours after the opening of the airport, the Revolutionary Guards of the Iranian Armed Forces closed it, citing security fears over the use of foreigners in the running of the airport. Only one Emirates flight from Dubai was allowed to land. The second flight from Dubai, which was an Iran Air flight, was forced to land in Isfahan International Airport, because the Mehrabad Airport did not allow it to land there after the Imam Khomeini airport was closed by the armed forces”. It took few days to the authorities to clarify this confused situation, and finally on May 13th the airport was reopened. The deputy head of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff Brigadier-­‐
General Alireza Afshar stated, "Because foreign companies will no longer be in charge of the airport's operation, security obstacles are removed." Though, the initial budget for the construction was 1 billion US$, the construction of the first terminal cost 350 millions US$, and the airport was operated by a consortium of four local airlines.2 However the airport have been equipped by the ILS only since August 2009, because “the system was purchased seven years ago but the selling firm refused to set it up due to sanctions against Iran. Iranian experts installed the ILS.” IKA has received the international certificate of Integrated Management System (IMS). 2 “Although no formal contract appeared to have been awarded. Soon later management of the airport has been transferred to the Iranian Airports Holding Company.” (Wikipedia) 4 Operations Concerning the transfer of international flights from Mehrabad airport to IKA, the authorities announced on October 26th 2007 “all international flights except those bound to and from Damascus, Jeddah and Medina were transferred to the Imam Khomeini International Airport”, meaning that IKA became progressively the first Iranian international airport. Phase 1 The achievement of the first phase includes projects such as the construction of the second runway, “completing the Customs Administration’s, the construction of the cargo terminal and VIP terminal with Haj terminal in engineering phase and airport Hotel in bid to find investor”. Currently IKA has the capacity to handle 6.5 million passengers per annum, the following figure shows the evolution of the passengers’ number from 2004 until 20103. The data are available in appendix4. Number of passengers 6000000 5000000 4000000 3000000 Number of passengers 2000000 1000000 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 We may notice that during the firsts years the airport had an impressive increase of its growth rate (between 40% to 70%). This is due essentially to the transfer of the flights from Mehrabad to IKA, furthermore, we may point out that the airport doesn’t suffer from any national competitions since IKA is the only international airport located in Tehran, so the airlines companies do not have any other choices if they want to operate from Tehran. The next figure shows the 3 The data regarding the number of passenger for 2011 are not yet available. 4 Source: Iranian Airport Holding Company, Ministry of Road and Transport. 5 evolution of the flights’ number and the volume of freights handled from 2004 to 2010.5 120000 100000 80000 Number of landing and takeoff 60000 Freight (tones) 40000 20000 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 !"##$%&$'#
The ratio !"#$!!" is about 139 passengers/flight. The forecasters estimated that IKA would move 5 millions passengers by March 2009, this number was reached in 2010. Also an extension to the southern part of Line 1 of Tehran Metro for IKA airport is currently under construction and was scheduled to reach the airport in first quarter of 2011 (This line is still not operational). There is also plan to have Line 3 of the Tehran Metro to reach its southern terminus at IKA in future. Phases 2 & 3 “Phases 2 & 3 of the airport have been designed to reach the airport capacity to 26.5 million and 50 million passengers annually with another possible phase 4 to reaching 90 million per year. Study and design for phase 4 will be done as soon as construction of phase 3 starts. According to the fact that airport is quickly reaching its current capacity of 6.5 million per year, a bid to find investors for second phase that has been announced by airport officials. It has partially concluded by selecting Naja Bonyad Taavon (A semi governmental foundation) as the developer of most of phase 2 including a new 238,000m2 passenger terminal with annual capacity of 20 millions, a southern runway, new parking with 2500 cars capacity and a 4 star 250 rooms airport hotel with some of execution activities have already been started. This phase will cost USD2.2 billion from which USD700 million will be provided by 5 Source: Iranian Airport Holding Company, Ministry of Road and Transport. 6 Iranian government and the rest USD1.5 billion was the matter of bid which the winner Bonyad Taavon is committed to invest about USD 1.2 billion of that and take at least 36 months to finish its portion”6. The second phase also includes the construction of a new city around the airport. This new city will be developed around the following axes: sport city, media city, business city, Internet city, conference city, eco-­‐tourist park, eco-­‐industrial park, sustainable energy resources, knowledge city, logistic city, and a center of Islamic culture & art7. Recommendations IKA as many others major airports provides all sorts of services (passenger services to network, parking, concessions, fuel farms, fire-­‐fighting…). Therefore in order to perform at the standard set by international best practices, I would propose first to focus the airport’s business model on a coherent line of activity. This approach would allow to the airport’s owner to master the complexities of that activity, and means also that the airport’s manager has to contract out the others activities to companies leader in their business field. In addition to this, I would suggest transferring progressively the lasts international flights from Mehrabad airport to IKA. In that way, IKA would be in charge of the internationals flights, while Mehrabad airport would be in charge of the national flights, the freight activity should also be transfered to a third airport. So each of these airports would focus only on one type of activity. My second recommendation would be to increase as much and soon as possible the economical and geographical size of the airport. It is known that the size is a driver of economic efficiency. Indeed, this approach would allow first obtaining better prices on the airport’s equipment and supplies and so decreasing the unit cost, and then lowering the risks due to seasonal or cyclical regional economic events.8 My third recommendation is to review the phase 3 and 4, because the figure (95 million p/a by 2030) seems too optimistic considering the current population of Iran (80 millions) and the relatively undeveloped state of the Iranian aviation. Also, we should point out the fact that an important part of the commercial services provided by the airport are transit services. As Bowen and Cidell has demonstrated it, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Persian Gulf was home of several largest airports buildings projects in the world. Furthermore, in addition to 6 Source: Wikipedia 7 Source: IKA’s website 8 Source: Richard de Neufville (2003), Airports of the Future: The Development of Airport Systems 7 its regionals competitors, and the world financial crisis that has impacted negatively the demand for air transport, Iran has to face severe internationals sanctions. In this context, it is possible that the number of passengers transiting through IKA would decrease. Also, Iran Air (the main airline company operating from IKA) might not be able to expend its activity and bring more passengers to the airport. Therefore, I believe that by decreasing the ground holding cost the airport would be more attractive. To do so, the second runway should be opened as soon as possible in order to increase the frequency of the flights. Moreover, since there are on average 139 passengers per flights, the passengers should be gather into bigger airplanes (for instance A300-­‐600; A310-­‐300) or the number of flights should be reduced in order to decrease the number of airplanes on the ground and so make the airport more attractive as a hub. 8 References http://www.mojnews.com/en/Miscellaneous/ViewContents.aspx?Contract=
cms_Contents_I_News&r=555818 http://worldaerodata.com/wad.cgi?id=IR99967&sch=OIIE http://statistics.airport.ir/HomePage.aspx?site=statistics.airport&lang=fa-­‐
IR&tabid=0 http://vivannews.com/Pages/News-­‐13915.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Imam_Khomeini_International_Airport http://www.centreforaviation.com/analysis/expansion-­‐plans-­‐for-­‐tehrans-­‐
imam-­‐khomeini-­‐international-­‐airport-­‐finalised-­‐4628 http://illinois.academia.edu/JulieCidell/Papers/1317543/Mega-­‐
Airports_The_Political_Economic_and_Environmental_Implications_of_the_W
orlds_Expanding_Air_Transportation_Gateways Richard de Neufville (2003), Airports of the Future: The Development of Airport Systems, International Symposium and Exposition in Celebration of 100 years of powered flight, Dayton, Ohio. 9 •
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Appendix 1: Description of the airport 10 Appendix 2: Maps of the airport 11 Appendix 3: plans of the Terminal Departure: Arrival: Transit: 12 Appendix 4: Airlines operating in IKA 13 Appendix 5: Airports in the Persian Gulf 14 Appendix 6: Data Year 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Number of landing and takeoff National International Total 0 8219 8219 0 12402 12402 0 18425 18425 2023 25331 27354 1947 28179 30126 2172 31378 33550 Number of passengers National International Total 0 1022570 1022570 0 1426561 1426561 0 2489331 2489331 0 3939532 3939532 1543 4230321 4231864 773 4984240 4985013 Freight (ton) National International 0 27397 0 29949 0 51815 0 92426 15 91167 15 103839 Total 27397 29949 51815 92426 91182 103854 Variation (in %) of the flights number compared to the previous year 51% 49% 48% 10% 11% Variation (in %) of the passengers number compared to the previous year 40% 74% 58% 7% 18% 15