Modelled on an aerotropolis, the new Luanda airport project is heralded as a catalyst that will accelerate the urbanization of the city’s outskirts and help Angola become a regional hub for civil aviation.
The Angola government will launch an international tender in September to select an operator for the new Luanda International Airport (NAIL), according to Transport Minister Ricardo D’Abreu. “We are preparing the necessary documents to launch an international competition. We expect to launch this international tender in September 2023,” he said.
According to the authorities, the worksite is in its final stages of completion, notably for the civil engineering work, while procedures are underway for certification by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to enable the airport to become operational as announced for December 2023.
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The project, which has been underway since 2007, has been interrupted for several years due to a number of architectural modifications caused by technical faults. The infrastructure under construction, 40 km south-east of Luanda city center, is intended to relay the existing main airport to keep pace with traffic growth and help serve Central and Southern African countries in particular.
According to a new plan unveiled last March by the Ministry of Transport, the new hub is to be linked to a rail network to alleviate interconnection difficulties with the capital’s city center. Once operational, the hub could handle up to 15 million passengers and almost 50,000 tonnes of goods per year.