Curaçao International Airport Partners.

On August 1, 2003 Curaçao Airport Partners (CAP), an international consortium, started a 30-year concession agreement to develop and operate the Curaçao International Airport in the Netherlands Antilles. Under this concession agreement CAP has taken responsibility for developing and operating the airport.

The airport terminal was designed on an initial capacity of 1.6 million passengers per year but with higher than projected average annual passenger growth rates, traffic at the end of 2013 is expected to approximate 1.8 million. Accordingly, plans are currently underway to expand the terminal facilities to accommodate a passenger volume of approximately 3 million passengers per year.

The property

Curaçao International Airport is located on the north coast of the island, only a few miles from its capital Willemstad – a unique World Heritage City with attractive Dutch Caribbean architecture. The new passenger terminal building was built in 2006 and is designed to be compliant with IATA standards for service level C, which has provided spacious facilities. All main passenger processes take place in the terminal. Some support functions are located in the adjacent old terminal building.
The building concept allows future expansions on both the east and west side.

The island’s airport location, about 40 miles north of Venezuela offers strategic convenience for transhipment/storage of goods and fuel supply and transit services for trans-Atlantic flights to and from the Caribbean and Latin American market.

The airport has a single runway oriented 11/29 with a length of 3’410 meters and width of 60 meters. The main operating direction is 11. A parallel taxiway runs along the complete length of the runway and is linked to the runway by 5 entries/exits. The entry at the western end of the runway is a double entry. No rapid exit taxiways exist, but there is no need for it with the current traffic volume.

The airfield layout with its current centerlines and clearances on runway and parallel taxiway allow a code F aircraft operation.
The passenger apron is located in front of the terminal building.

For the island of Curaçao, the airport is the main gateway to the world’s air traffic and for the speedy delivery of goods. Not only does the local population rely on this vital infrastructure; the main economic sectors tourism, oil refinery and banking can not exist without a well performing airport.
The airports performance and reliability are absolutely crucial for the entire island.

A combination of foreign investments and structural economic growth will make the airport property an attractive zone for new types of businesses and it will also generate a significant in-flow of capital and entrepreneurial opportunities.

There are about 146 hectares (ha) of land suitable for development in and around the airport, making it one of the largest contiguous areas of land available within the central core of the island. An extensive Airport City concept has been proposed by the government and is being actively explored.

Development opportunities for Curaçao International Airport

• Passenger Terminal expansion
  The expansion will provide for a capacity of approximately 2.5 million passengers annually. The location to the west of the new terminal building is foreseen for an extension beyond 2.5 million passengers annually.

• Growth of passenger traffic developing in a Caribbean hubPassenger numbers are expected to grow steadily. A hub connecting the Caribbean region is therefore an important economic target. This local hub may eventually evolve into a hub between North and South America.
  
• Additional wide-bodied passenger flights seem likely (charter flights), but this will evidently depend on the growth of tourism on Curaçao (no large numbers of transfer passengers are expected).

• Growth of cargo traffic
  Conditions for increased cargo traffic are favorable at Curaçao International Airport. A cargo hub is well within the realms of possibility.

• Commercial development
  A number of options are conceivable for the remaining undeveloped airside areas are conceivable, e.g hangars for private or commercial customers.
  Further development of General Aviation.

In 2012 Total Passengers increased with 7% from 1.65 million passengers to 1.76 million passengers. While Total Arriving Passengers and Total Departing Passengers showed healthy growth percentages (both 4%), Total Transit Passengers, showed a spectacular growth of 23%.
This growth is the result of the collaboration of the Curaçao home carrier Dutch Antilles Express (DAE) with Ufly (also known as Falcon Air) from the US.

This collaboration enabled DAE to expand its network with US destinations. The collaboration gave DAE the opportunity to convert Venezuela and to a lesser degree also Surinam into vital catchment areas for its network.

Inselair, the other international home carrier from Curaçao has already been applying this model with success.
Inselair also saw an increase in its transit traffic due to its compliance with the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) in 2012.

This success also resulted in a code sharing agreement with KLM. As a result of this code sharing agreement KLM transfers passengers with final destination Paramaribo or Amsterdam on the Amsterdam – Paramaribo route via Curaçao.

Statistics 2012

Furthermore Curaçao welcomed COPA and Westjet as new carriers to Curaçao in 2012. The first connecting Panama 4 times weekly with Curaçao and the latter connecting Toronto 1 time weekly with Curaçao.

R. Blanchart
CEO Curaçao International Airport Partners