Cairo International Airport, Egypt

Cairo International Airport is one of the major airports in Egypt and the primary hub for the national carrier Egypt Air. The airport is located to the north-east of the city around 15km from the business area of the city.

The airport is administered by the Egyptian Holding Co. for Airports and Air Navigation (EHCAAN), which controls four companies including: Cairo Airport Co., Egyptian Airports Co., National Air Navigation Services and Aviation Information Technology and the Cairo Airport Authority (CAA), which is the regulatory body.

Cairo International is known as the second busiest in Africa after Johannesburg International in South Africa. Cairo handled nearly 10.8 million passengers in 2006 and ten million passengers in 2007 and it is becoming busier and busier. The airport has two terminals and a third is under construction and due to be completed by mid-2008.

There are also four runways and a single cargo terminal (the fourth runway was opened in early 2008). Runway 05R/23L is 3,300m long, 05L/23R has a length of 4,000m and 16/34 is 3,180m (all of the runways are 60m wide). The fourth runway, south of the existing airfield is 4,000m by 65m and suitable for the Airbus A380.

The airport has the potential to be a major hub with its positioning between Africa, the Middle East and Europe (especially with facilities for the A380).

CAIRO AIRPORT OPERATION

In May 2006 Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA) of Switzerland was awarded a $7m contract to operate terminals 1 and 2 at the airport. The new terminal three will be operated by Fraport of Germany.

TERMINALS 1 AND 2

Terminal 1 first came into use in 1963 and can handle 6.5 million passengers a year. Terminal 2 was opened in 1984 and has a capacity of 3.5 million passengers a year.

Terminal 1 has 12 gates and three of these are double-level for large aircraft, all of these make use of bus transfer. Terminal 2 has seven gates with ten passenger boarding bridges. Over this area there are 131 aircraft stands, nine of which are contact stands.

TERMINAL 3

The new terminal 3 (T3) is being constructed adjacent to terminal 2 which had very limited capability for expansion. The two terminals will however be linked by a bridge and the access roads surrounding the two adjacent structures are being refurbished and reconfigured (car parks are also being moved).

The new T3 main building will be three levels with 164,000m² of floor space. The main building will also contain mezzanine levels. The building will contain areas for arrivals and departures halls, baggage handling, and retail outlets. In addition there will be plant areas for the building services.

The terminal will have two extendable piers and gates for domestic and international services (contact and remote). The two piers will be connected to the main building by concourses. The Airbus A380 will be acceptable at two of the gates. The new terminal will be served by a new access road linking to the Cairo ring road.

When T3 is opened the capacity of the airport will have been doubled equipping it to handle an increase in passenger numbers for the future (airport will now have a capacity of 22 million passengers a year).

CAIRO AIRPORT CONTRACTORS

In September 2006 ARINC Managed Services was chosen to provide advanced passenger check-in systems and IT technologies for terminal 3 (project worth $22m). Systems include: self-service CUSS, ARINC SelfServ, iMUSE common-use passenger system; AirVUE Flight Information Display System (FIDS) and AirDB™ airport operational database.

The T3 project is worth $400m (funding was provided by the World Bank, National Investment Bank of Egypt and Egyptian Government).

ARINC is providing the project with design, project management, supply management, installation, and commissioning for around 14 of the most important IT systems including: passenger check-ins and displays, parking systems, biometric gates and ramp control.

The airport general construction contractor is TAV (Egypt) Airports Holding Company of Turkey. Sagem Sécurité was selected to provide the terminal with new technology biometric border control gates. The new automatic fingerprint recognition system can be used to identify incoming passengers to increase the speed of the immigration process (the first custom Biometric Immigration Gate (BIG) System in Egypt).