Although construction progress reaches 85%, the opening of the Peruvian airport terminal is challenged by the need to resort to modular bridges and face the impact of road closures on account of ongoing separate government works. This combination of factors anticipates possible traffic congestion in the area.
The first airport city in South America, located in the province of Callao, Peru, is currently 85% complete and will open on December 18, 2024. The 935 hectares expansion of the current Jorge Chávez International Airport (AIJC) required US$2 billion direct investments from operator Latam Airport Partners (LAP), while third parties contributed an additional US$400 million.
“It has been estimated that the contribution to the country's GDP will be US$3.12 billion (1.3%) per year from 2025 to 2030,” said Paula Loayza, Real Estate Manager at LAP. “Starting next year, a total of US$1.52 billion will be collected in payments and transfers, equivalent to 3.7 times tax collection at Callao in 2022, whereas 121,000 new jobs will be generated.”
The new airport will have the capacity to serve 40 million passengers and 14,000 commercial flights will land on its runway. New services include 3- and 5-star Costa del Sol hotels, a logistics park, a fuel plant, a loading area, and the first remotely controlled apron control system [for aircraft parking] in the region. Meanwhile, the new airport's three-level infrastructure stands out, as it allows separating public and private transportation, as well as having a circuit only for taxis, with a timed pick-up and monitored by the terminal police station.
“Through a tripartite agreement between the Urban Transportation Authority for Lima and Callao (ATU), the operators and LAP, concessions and routes are being coordinated to provide access to the area within the airport,” Loayza explained.
The transfer from the current airport to the new airport will be done in six hours, said Diego Cuesta, director of the ORAT ( Operational Readiness and Transition ) program.
“Operations will close at 00:00 am and open at 6:30 am, hours within which we will carry out movements of essential equipment and personnel,” Cuesta continued. “International flights land at night, so there will be no problems in the morning with domestic flights, which will start leaving at 06:45 am,” he stressed.
However, the airport will begin operating using two modular access bridges, with two lanes per side, instead of the Santa Rosa Bridge, which has four lanes per side and should have been delivered in 2021.
That is not all. Added to this contingency, there are two other projects of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MTC) pending execution: the Santa Rosa Expressway (for vehicles) and the construction of the Line 4 branch of the Lima Metro, which will not be ready until 2028, thus affecting vehicular traffic for the terminal and the residents of Callao, according to the general manager of LAP, Juan José Salmón.
“[Modular bridges] are an imperfect mitigation measure because all the Government is doing is putting a deck over a river. It didn't occur to him to build the internal roads that had to be connected,” Salmón complained.
The government offered a loan of up to US$ 10 million for the maintenance of these alternative routes, which must be repaid once the Santa Rosa Bridge comes into operation. Although for LAP this amount is minimal compared to their daily expenses of US$2 million on the project, according to their general manager, they accepted the loan because their cash flow is "stressed" with 10,000 employees working on the site at the moment.
Even so, the traffic that will be generated by the lack of traffic lanes into the airport, added to the closure of avenues due to other MTC projects in the area, will require the presence of police officers 24 hours a day for at least four more years.
“We don't have everything under control,” said Salmón.
