New $3.2 billion airport set to open. There’s just one glaring problem
Arriving late for a flight is a universal fear for travellers worldwide. But a new airport in Peru’s capital comes with obstacles that promise a uniquely horrible experience.
A highway meant to whisk travellers to the $3.2 billion terminal has yet to be built, even though flights are supposed to begin operating in just seven weeks. A bridge to get across a river that runs along the grounds was never constructed.
The new Jorge Chavez Airport in Lima was built at a cost of $3.2 billion. Credit: Bloomberg
There’s a subway stop labelled “Airport” planned for Lima’s new metro system, but that station is set to be built (three years from now) much closer to the old airport that’s being decommissioned.
“Having a subway station named ‘Airport’ where there won’t be an airport anymore — it’s just the most graphic example of our lack of planning as a nation,” said Carlos Gutierrez, the head of Peru’s airline industry trade association.
Such head-scratching blunders at Jorge Chavez International Airport are the painful fallout from Peru’s relentless political turbulence. A propensity to fire and incarcerate presidents — and the ensuing government turnover that’s given the country 24 transport ministers since 2001 — is catching up with the once booming nation that for decades was seen as a mostly boring bastion of stability relative to its more volatile peers in Latin America.
Police officers guard the provisional bridge connecting to the new airport.Credit: Bloomberg
The current airport — the region’s sixth-busiest, and a hub for LATAM Airlines Group — is at its limit, transporting 24 million passengers last year, almost twice its capacity. The new one will accommodate 30 million travellers and have the capacity to grow up to 60 million.
Authorities have been sounding the alarm about the need for a new airport for decades, with plans to construct a new terminal just to the west of the existing site finalised in 2018 by Germany’s Fraport, which calls its local unit Lima Airport Partners. But Peru has had seven different presidents since then, and in all the comings and goings the project veered off course.
“If one wants to name an example of the cost to the country of political instability, high turnover in public jobs and corruption, then look no further,” said Paola Lazarte, a former transport minister who left in September 2023 after nine months in the role.
The new airport — technically in the municipality of Callao, which is adjacent to Lima — is scheduled to open March 30, and Peru’s government is trying desperately to get it ready. It has created a new entrance separate from where the highway was supposed to go, deploying two temporary pre-fabricated bridges meant for natural disasters to get across the Rimac River.
The new airport will accommodate 30 million travellers and have the capacity to grow up to 60 million.Credit: Bloomberg
The bridges will get private cars from congested side roads into the terminal, but there’s no bus service currently scheduled, and there’s no room to allow pedestrians to walk across. That’s a problem for the airport’s 17,000 workers, most of whom now arrive at the existing terminal via public transportation. And officials are worried about the safety of travellers forced to navigate the traffic-choked streets in the crime-filled neighbourhood that surrounds the airport.
In private, government authorities and officials at LAP blame each other for the situation. LAP points out that the infrastructure on the airport grounds has been completed as originally ordered, even though the government was over a decade late in providing the land. There was an embarrassing blunder when a new control tower was installed with windows that created a double-vision effect for air-traffic controllers, but those have been replaced. LAP declined to make Chief Executive Officer Juan Jose Salmon available for an interview.
For its part, the government doesn’t have an overarching explanation for what went wrong and directs blame at previous administrations.
Transport Minister Raul Perez-Reyes, who has held the job for 16 months, declined an interview request. He has said the new airport will be South America’s best and added he will rename the “Airport” subway station to avoid confusion. He said he’ll enlist hundreds of police officers to patrol the area that borders the new terminal to protect public safety.
The airport is scheduled to open on March 30.Credit: Bloomberg
“Safety is very important,” Salmon said last year. “Imagine that something happens with a bus full of tourists in that area of Callao — it’d be catastrophic.”
The latest estimates call for the subway line to be completed in 2028, though there are no firm plans to extend it to the new airport, and the company behind it says it isn’t interested in bidding on such a project. The government has said the highway to the airport, beset by years of delays over eminent domain issues, will now be ready in three years. A bridge is included as part of the project.
Bryan Castillo, the founder of a Callao architects association that also serves as a neighbourhood advocacy organisation, said the bungled process to get the new airport operating is indicative of a general lack of foresight among government officials. He’s concerned the new highway will serve as an ugly divider in the neighbourhood, and thinks it was designed to hide the area from wealthy travellers.
“It’s all insultingly stigmatising,” Castillo said in an interview. “Only now we are coming to realise how important urban planning would have been.”
Bloomberg
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