Barcelona inaugurates the Terminal 1 in El Prat Airport

16/06/2009

The Terminal 1 in the Barcelona’s Airport has been inaugurated this morning by the President of the Government, Josá Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and it will begin working from tomorrow on. The second airport with the most of the traffic in Spain has been consolidated year after year as an international referent. The ambitious project, which has been studied and built for more than ten years, wants to fit in with the development of the air traffic, calculated in an 8% a year. With this installation, El Prat Airport will be used by 55 millions of passengers a year.

The creation of this new infrastructure, designed by Ricardo Bofill with an estimated cost of 3,000 million of euros, will imply to increase the current flight figure from 62 to 90 per hour. It has been foreseen that 100,000 passengers a day will go across the new terminal which has an area of 525,000 square metres. Besides increasing the amount of users, it has also been increased the amount of accesses by means of all kind of transportation: buses,taxis, trains, the new number 9 underground line, the AVE and the shuttle buses that will link the T1 with the T2.

In the inauguration ceremony of the Terminal 1 the President has emphasised that this new infrastructure will turn the Prat “into one of the best airports all around Europe and a referent for the whole Mediterranean in terms of airport  models.

The air fleet that will operate is made up of three aeronautic agreements that will be spread out little by little. From tomorrow on it has been foreseen to begin using the brand new terminal of the Star Alliance that is currently made up of the following companies: Lufthansa, Spanair, Scandinavian, Swiss, Tap, Turkish, Australian Airlines, Lot, United, US Airways and Singapore Airlines. In the coming days the rest of the airlines that work at the airport will join it. They are Ana, Air China, Air Canada, Thai and Sudafrican. In July, at last, it will be the turn for the Oneworld Alliance with British Airways Iberia, American Airlines, Finnair and Royal Jordanian as the leaders.

It has also been foreseen to operate Clickair and Vueling to, which due to their merger will be part of Iberia’s group, Finally, it will be in September when Sky Team –Aeroflot, Aeroméxico, Air France, KLM, Alitalia, Continental, Czech, Delta and Air Europa- have their headquarters in the new terminal.