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Minsk airport to complete most of passenger terminal modernization by late May

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MINSK, 3 May (BelTA) – Most of the work involved in modernizing the terminal in the Minsk National Airport will be finished by the end of May, BelTA learned from the airport’s Director General Dmitry Melikyan on 3 May.

The official said: “By 30 May we will finish work in the sector intended for the Union State of Belarus and Russia. In anticipation of the 2nd European Games Minsk 2019 we’ve done most of the work within a short period of time. Only an insignificant amount of work is left to be done. As a matter of principle, it does not affect passenger service.” In his words, after reconstruction in 2014 the entire terminal can welcome 7.5 million passengers every year. If the baggage area and the departure area are increased, the throughput capacity will be raised to 9 million passengers per annum.

Meanwhile, the airport has started designing the second terminal. It will be built when the need arises. “We have an apron used as a parking lot for aircraft. It can be used as an apron in front of the terminal. This way we will be able to build it faster in order to increase the capacity of the passenger terminal complex,” the director general said.

According to preliminary estimates, the airport will need the second terminal by 2022 when the annual traffic will reach 8 million passengers.

Dmitry Melikyan noted that at present about 30% of the passengers the airport welcomes use Belarus as a staging point on the way to other countries. The airport intends to develop transit business. “We work with long-range flights to various destinations and we don’t stop for a day. We expect that overseas flights and flights to Asia will be resumed thanks to long-range wide-body aircraft,” he added.

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