Barcelona International Airport (El Prat) (BCN/LEBL), Spain

Barcelona International Airport (El Prat) completed a major four year expansion program in late 2005. This was the first major upgrade since a new terminal was built for 1992 when Barcelona hosted the Olympic Games.

The airport, which is situated 12km from Barcelona city centre, is a major hub for the Catalonia region. It is run by Aeropuertos Españoles y Navegación Aérea (AENA – Spanish airports and air traffic agency), a publicly owned body which manages 40 other major Spanish airports and which is responsible to the Spanish government via the Ministry of Development.

The major expansion of Barcelona International Airport is in response to the projected increase in Spanish air traffic, which is set to double by 2007. In 2001, the number of passengers passing through the airport was 20.7 million, by 2005 this had increased to 27.1 million; the new facilities can now handle in excess of 50 million passengers per year.

The airport has links to 50 European Union cities, 40 in other countries as well as 30 domestic destinations.

CONTRACTORS AND CONSTRUCTION

The development, in preparation for the 1992 Olympics, required the construction of a new terminal, which was designed by Ricardo Bofill. The expansion project was undertaken by a joint venture team lead by Bovis Lend Lease.

The joint venture team consisted of Bovis Lend Lease, Eurostudios SA and Inocsa Ingenieria SL. The expansion and related infrastructure work required an investment of £780m over the four-year period.

The work undertaken for the expansion included several major construction projects. The first of these was a six-gate extension to the airport's existing North Terminal, followed by the construction of a new midfield terminal of 470,000m² and a new air traffic control tower of 53.7m.

The aircraft handling facilities were also upgraded, starting with the construction of a third runway (07R/25L) parallel to the current 07L-25R, an aircraft apron of 800,000m² and a system of taxiing strips. In addition, the project also required new car parks and new service buildings for logistical, industrial and aircraft servicing activities, as well as new hotels and security buildings.

The inter-modal nature of the airport has been emphasised by being remodelled around the current road access, extending it to the new intra-runway terminal, at the same time as introducing new accesses to the industrial, logistics and service areas.

Contributing to transport integration is a new railway station for conventional and high-speed trains in the new terminal. The new railway and underground nucleus are located beneath the current terminals allowing passengers ease of access and saving space. The airport rail system will connect the airport to the Spanish AVE network, and to both Line 2 and Line 9 of the Barcelona Metro.

The airport is also accessible by RENFE commuter train on the C10 line, which runs from Estació de França, with a major stop at Sants train station, providing transfer to the Barcelona Metro system. The exploitation of railway transport to and from the airport is the remit of the local operators Metro, Catalonia Railways and RENFE, and high-speed rail transport by GIF.

A current study shows that the mode of transportation to the airport is heavily biased towards individual transportation (79.5%), while shared transport accounts for 20.5%. The aim for the future is to try and tip the balance towards shared or public transport by provision of highly efficient rail systems.

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS

As part of the expansion and upgrade of airport services Barcelona installed a state-of-the-art communications network. The system, from Nortel Networks, was based on a Gigabyte Ethernet system, which supports the airport's service and security systems. The network replaced the airport's Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network, which was out of date.

The network is based on Nortel Networks' BAYSTACK Ethernet switches and PASSPORT 8100 and 8600 multiservice switches. It features multi-link trunking that allows for fail-safe connectivity to the network centre.

The system also provides many sophisticated services to airport users with a minimum of additional infrastructure investment.

These services include secure Virtual Private Networks (VPN) for businesses inside the airport, IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, WiFi and other live data services such as flight information transfers to laptops and PDAs.

THE FUTURE FOR BARCELONA, EL PRAT

The expansion is designed to accommodate passenger and air traffic increases projected up to 2018. The new facilities will allow 90 flights per hour to pass through the airport; the number of passengers could be more than 45 million per year.

The airport will have parking facilities for 19,000 vehicles. The expansion could generate 40,000 new jobs in the Catalonia region and inject $7bn into the local economy. The Spanish Ministry of Transports and Infrastructures is also due to invest almost €3bn in airports that serve the Canary Islands in the period 2006–2020; Barcelona will almost certainly receive some of this funding and will be able to make further improvements.

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