Voronezh airport plans to transform into cargo hub
Voronezh Airport, located in the homonymous city (about 540 km to the south-west of Moscow) will have its runway extended by 300 m by 2017. The runway’s total length according to the project should reach 2,600 m, which will entitle the airport to be approved for handling Boeing 747, regional administration reported on its official website.
The project, supported by the regional administration, is aimed at allowing the airport to embark on a large-scale cargo transportation development strategy with the ambition to become one of Russia’s largest cargo processing hubs.
The first cargo flight was serviced in January this year and since June the airport has been providing cargo customs clearance.
The reconstruction of Voronezh Airport has been underway since 2014 and is scheduled to complete in 2017. The current upgrades “allowed the airport to get rid of infrastructural restrictions for medium-range aircraft operations and lay the groundwork for long-range operations,” – according to Alexander Belevich, General Director of the Aviaservice Management Company, the airport’s operator.
In October 2015 Voronezh airport was officially certified to handle wide-body Boeing 767s. The airport then initiated the approval procedure for serving freight versions of Boeing 767 and Boeing 757-200.
Apart from the runway extension project, the regional administration is considering plans for building a new passenger terminal with the floor area of 35,000 square meters. “Developing customs and logistics infrastructure inside the airport is just the beginning of a much larger project. Eventually, with a new terminal built and the runway extended we will transform the airport into a full-scale regional transport and logistics hub,” – the airport’s spokesperson explained.
In the first quarter of the year the passenger traffic of the airport grew 9.2 % YOY from 69,200 to 75,500 passengers. Introduction of new routes contributed to traffic growth.
The airport handled its first cargo flight in January this year, and has been providing cargo customs clearance services since June. Within the first six months of the year 42 tons of cargos were transported by passenger flights and 142 tons by freight aircraft.
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