16.781: Term Project. Planning For a New Airport in Thessaloniki, Greece

Transcription

1 16.781: Term Project Planning For a New Airport in Thessaloniki, Greece Nikolas Pyrgiotis Ioannis Simaiakis 12/14/2007

2 1 Introduction Macedonia (Mikra) Airport General Airside data Airside specifications Runway utilization Landside Declared Capacity Management and Operation Airport Traffic Annual Traffic Growth Aircraft Movements Seasonality of Traffic Traffic Growth in Various Sets of Markets Cargo operations Problems in SKG Fog Wind and Mountains Runway length Ground access Environmental Issues, Noise and Urban Development Master Plan of new airport Criticism to the Master Plan and the Necessity for a new airport Master Plan Traffic Growth Not Meeting Expectations The need for a new airport Design and planning principles for a new airport Location requirements Capacity requirements Forecasts Design Peak Hour Analysis Aircraft Mix Assumption Limited forecast accuracy and future uncertainties The choice of the current airport traffic as a base Airline deregulation and uncertainty in the Greek market Low Cost Carriers Eastern Europe Traffic Aircraft movements Flexible design and dynamic strategic planning Proposed Location and New Airport Benefits Expanded Catchment Area The New Airport as Part of a Broad (Greek and Balkan) Transportation Network Environmental Issues and Noise Development Airfield design Capacity envelope of one runway Verification of Adequate Airfield Capacity during DPH Runway orientation...36

3 5.4 Primary Runway length Critical aircraft Runways Taxiways Apron requirements Future needs Second taxiway Second runway Positioning of the second runway Landside Design Remote and Contact Stands Choice of Terminal Building Configuration Terminal Building Planning and Design Departures Level Arrivals Level Cargo Facility Parking Area Location of the second runway First Phase Development Overall Airport Layout Cost Analysis Development of several master plan alternatives for comparative analysis Need for expansion First expansion alternative Second expansion alternative Third expansion alternative Airside improvements Forth expansion alternative Fifth expansion alternative Concluding Proposal...66

4 1 Introduction The aim of this study is to provide a development plan and a preliminary design analysis for a new airport in Thessaloniki, Greece. The first objective is to analyze the current status of the International Airport in Thessaloniki, SKG, identify its problems and limitations and clearly bring forward the reasons why a new airport is necessary. Based on historical data for the traffic in SKG we will try to provide a forecast of the traffic growth and by analyzing the data made available from the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (HCAA) for SKG to perform a more detailed analysis for the requirements of the new airport. The first part of this project is, thus, a feasibility study for a new airport in Thessaloniki. The second part of the part project is to identify a location for the new airport and to perform a preliminary design analysis for the airfield and landside facilities. Of course all these steps of the analysis are interrelated and this whole second part was a feedback loop, as shown in Figure 1. For example, we might first choose a location and then design a runway that didn t fit in the direction that minimizes crosswinds, hence having to reselect a location. When designing the airport the main concern of our approach was to provide a plan that would be flexible and adjustable to changes in traffic trends. 1. Location 2. Airfield Design 3. Landside Design Figure 1: The feedback loop of our design and planning process

5 2 Macedonia (Mikra) Airport 2.1 General Macedonia Airport is serving the 2nd largest greek city, Thessaloniki. Its ICAO code is LGTS and its IATA code SKG. Its original name is Mikra, named after the neighboring mountain, Mikra. It got renamed Macedonia during the 90s in the light of the dispute with the neighbor country FYROM, mostly known as Macedonia, over its name. Many people are still referring to it as Mikra. The airport started its commercial activity in It is owned by the Greek State and operated by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (HCAA). Mikra s geographical coordinates are 40 31' 11.01" N ' 15.42" E. Its altitude is 7 m and its distance from the city of Thessaloniki is 16.2km. Figure 2: Satellite view of the airport in the south-east part of Thessaloniki

6 2.2 Airside data 1 SKG has two crossing runways, as it can be identified from Figure Airside specifications 16 Threshold (16-34) clide path ILS 10 50m 28 (10-28) Threshold clide path 60m ILS 34 Figure 3: The runway configuration in SKG and the ILS installations Runway 16/34 is 2410m long and 60m wide and is equipped with ILS Cat. II on end 16. It has a parallel taxiway 23m wide. Runway 10/28 is 2440m long and 50m wide and is equipped with ILS Cat I on end 10. It has a parallel taxiway 23m wide. The apron s surface is m 2 and has 22 remote stands Runway utilization The direction of the most frequent winds is N-NW, so that the runway 34 is used for the best part of the year for landings. Runway 28 can be used for take-offs. According to C. Thomaidis 2 more than 55% of the take-offs are performed from 34. Especially during morning hours, runway 34 is virtually the only one in use. During fog, there are usually calm winds. So, runway 16 can be used, since it has ILS Cat II installed. In the event that there is a combination of fog and not strong northern winds, runway 10 is used. 1 Information from HCAA website, communication with the airport and 2 C. Thomaidis: Air Traffic Characteristics in SKG, Master thesis, Aristotelian University of Thessalonki, Greece

7 During visual landing conditions and calm winds the pilots are usually free to choose the preferred runway, so flights originating from Southern Greece prefer to land on 34 whereas flights from Europe land on 10 or Landside The terminal building has a surface of m 2. The cargo building s surface is 5.850m Declared Capacity The declared capacity of the airport is currently 4 million passengers and is defined by the capacity of the passenger buildings and not the runways (total area of 3200m 2, 30 check-in desks). 2.5 Management and Operation HCAA is a public authority of the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications of Greece. It is essentially a political entity although she is is responsible for controlling the Greek airspace, providing air navigation services, operating all the necessary aeronautical equipment (surveillance, navigation, communication) and operation all Greek airports and heliports with the exception of Athens International Airport. HCAA is often blamed for many of the problems of Greek Air Transportation, especially for the level of service and/or safety in major Greek airports with substantial traffic and important role in regional development.

8 2.6 Airport Traffic Annual Traffic Growth One can observe that the traffic is growing slowly since the big fall experienced in 2001 and The traffic is increasing faster this year, since the growth rate during the first 9 months of 2007 is 8.7%. It is expected to exceed 4 million passengers. Traffic growth domestic pax international pax total pax Year Figure Aircraft Movements Aircraft movements #aircrafts year Figure 5 3 Statistics available to the public in the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority website:

9 2.6.3 Seasonality of Traffic The following graphs indicate that the international traffic is highly seasonal whereas the domestic is fairly constant over the year. Approximately 60% of the traffic occurs during the summer season (May-October) traffic pax international domestic Month of Year Figure traffic Pax international domestic Month of Year Figure 7

10 2.6.4 Traffic Growth in Various Sets of Markets The following graphs depict the traffic share and traffic growth of different market segments. Western Europe Traffic pax , , , , ,5 year Figure 8 Eastern Europe Traffic #pax , , , , ,5 year Figure 9

11 Middle East, Cyprus, Turkey #pax , , , , ,5 year Figure 10 One can easily notice that the traffic of Eastern Europe is experiencing a great growth rate which is mainly attributed to the traffic growth in Russia, as one can see in the following chart: Russia Traffic #pax , , , , ,5 year Figure 11

12 2.6.5 Cargo operations As the following figures indicates, cargo operations have been dropping for the last years. Unfortunately we could not find an explanation for this trend. Cargo operations Cargo(tons) Year Figure 12: Cargo (in tons)

13 2.7 Problems in SKG SKG has been experiencing many operational problems which affect the availability, the capacity and the level of service of the airport. Those problems are hereafter analyzed Fog The main problem of SKG is the fog. This was also the big motivation for installing the ILS Cat II on the threshold of runway 16. According to communication with HCAA, 12 flights got cancelled in 2006 and 98 got delayed during This is a particular bad availability rate if one takes into account the size of the city and the importance of the airport. According to press articles, the location of the airport is particularly bad concerning the accumulation of the fog. It is said, that the area of the airport has due to unique geographical characteristics much heavier fog than the city itself or other areas surrounding the city as can be seen in Figure 15. On explanation for this could be that the airport is surrounded both to the south east and the north east by mountains and high hills Wind and Mountains The winds over the airport are mainly N and NW as can be seen in the following chart which shows the wind distribution in Thessaloniki between 2002 and The delay was defined as a delay more than 20 minutes.

14 Figure 13 Annual Wind distribution 5 That means that most of the time, the runway 34 must be utilized for arrivals. The problem here is that the mountain Kardia is located beneath the flightpath of 34 and very close to it. That is why runway 34 can be utilized only when visual approaches are possible. As the chart shows, this is the runway suitable for landings most of the time. The probability of wind blowing with a magnitude more than 4 beaufort is 29% uring January, 24% during February and 24% during December. Note that during those months the prevailing wind direction is the northern: Figure 14 Wind distribution in Decembers Picture taken from 6 Picture taken from

15 The conclusion of this investigation concerning the runways, their navigation equipment, the weather and the geography is that the runway configuration and their equipment are problematic and fail to secure the safe operation of the airport Runway length Another very important problem of SKG concerns the length of the runways: Both runways are approximately only 2400 meters long. Evidently, the airport cannot be used for long-haul flights. Widebodies which are often see for medium-haul charter flights in other Greek airports cannot take off from SKG either. According to the table 9-3b of the book, the FAA takeoff field for an Airbus is 2680 meters. This is a rather conservative estimation, but shows that this runway length is too short even for a frequently utilized medium-haul aircraft. As a result, the only wide bodies which can currently depart from the airport for medium-haul flights are the A330 and the B767, both not at their maximum take-off weight. Figure 15 : SKG and the surrouding mountains and hills. Mountain Kardia in the red circle lies beneath the flighpath to runway 34.

16 2.7.4 Ground access Another major problem of SKG is the ground access. As it can be seen in the above map, the airport is to the southeast of the city. It is isolated from big neighboring cities which are to the north west of the city and both the harbor and railway station of the city which are both in the western end of the city. The airport is particularly well located for the Chalkidiki peninsula which is a major tourist destination. However, other tourist areas to the south west of the city are poorly served. The ground access problem is highly correlated not only with the location of the other cities, the sea port and the train station, but also with the infrastructure of Thessaloniki: Travelers coming from the west have effectively to cross the city and there is no current commitment to build rail train or metro which will serve the airport Environmental Issues, Noise and Urban Development As can be seen from Figure 2, aircraft which land instrumentally on runway 16 have to fly over a good part the city, since the flightpath leading to the threshold of 16 lies above the city. Airplanes departing from runway 34 have to turn left at 600ft so as to minimize the noise effect. In any case, the airport is very closely located to the city. More importantly, the area around the airport has been gaining great value in the last years and is developing fast. The urban area both from the north and the city is expanding towards the airport and the land which the airport occupies is expected to be of great value in the following years. 2.8 Master Plan of new airport 7 In order to give a mitigate some of the aforementioned problems, the HCAA has come up with an ambitious master plan for SKG. The master plan can be seen in the Figure 16 and comprises two parts: 7 Information gathered from proceedings of the 1 st Conference: Airport-Design and Operation- Thessaloniki 2003

17 The extension of 10/28 runway A new terminal building, new taxiways and new apron Runway 10/28 is planned to be extended for 1150 meters and will reach length of 3440 meters. The 1000 meters of this extension will be achieved by landfill in the Thermaikos gulf as it can be identified in Figure 16. In this way the airport will be able to accommodate practically any aircraft expected to enter service in SKG-a ER is not expected! After the expansion, ILS Cat II will be installed at threshold 10 replacing the current ILS Cat I. The auctioning of the runway extension was substantially delayed due to lawsuits filed by local communities. Their rational concerns the environmental effects of the work as the runway extension, once completed, will hamper the circulation of the water within the gulf. The construction was auctioned in 2005, works started in 2006 and it is expected to be completed by Because of the works, the runway 10 is currently closed. 8 The budget is 220 million. The new passenger building has a total surface of m 2 which is specified to serve 8 million passengers on IATA service level B, 2800 peak hour departing or arriving passengers and 4200 peak hour passengers in total. It will be equipped with 14 contact gates,100 check in counters, 8 conveyor belts and modern CUTE, CUSS and HBS systems. The new apron will provide 36 remote stands and taxilanes for aircrafts of type E and F. 8 The notam: A1940/06 - THESSALONIKI / MAKEDONIA/INTL: RWY 10/28 CLOSED FOR LANDING. RWY 28 CLOSED FOR TAKEOFF. RWY 10 AVAILABLE FOR TAKEOFF ONLY. 05 OCT 06: UNTIL 31 DEC 22:

18 Figure 16: The proposed master plan The airport with the new terminal will reach an annual capacity of 12 million passengers tripling its current estimated capacity. It is forecast to be sufficient for the traffic until at least The design of the new terminal building has cost 15 million and it is a luxurious building reflecting the traditional view of the airport as a gateway to the city. The construction is estimated to cost 500 million, but has not been auctioned yet. The construction was supposed to begin in 2008 and the new building becoming operational in However, rumors have it, that the new terminal plan has been abandoned. 2.9 Criticism to the Master Plan and the Necessity for a new airport Master Plan The master plan, however ambitious, proves first of all to be self-contradictory: The new apron and taxilanes will be designed for aircraft of type E and F although the ultimate runway length will be less than 3500 meters which is insufficient for aircraft of type F. What is more, it is not reasonable to expect A380s operating in SKG. The runway extension runs into the sea because the surrounding mountains make it impossible to extend the runway in the land. This decision has led too many lawsuits

19 because of the environmental effects. The experts have not reached a unanimous conclusion regarding the effects of this extension to the water circulation and the ecosystem of the Thermaikos gulf. In any case, the runway selected to be extended is the 10/28 which is the one with the strongest crosswinds. The master plan does not give a solution to the fog problem and the mountainous terrain of the area. According to communication with HCAA personnel, the only solution would be the installation of ILS Cat III, but this is technically infeasible because of the surrounding mountains and hills. There are also some plans for improving the ground access to the airport, no plans have however been finalized or auctioned. In conclusion the master plan addresses only the problems of airfield and landside capacity but does not mitigate the problems of wind, fog, noise, mountains and ground access. We must also keep in mind that there is no space in SKG for the construction of a third runway Traffic Growth Not Meeting Expectations The limitations concerning Thessaloniki s International Airport, SKG, have been discussed in the previous section. These limitations restrain the traffic from growing at rates equivalent to other airports in Greece, such as Athens and Heraclion International Airports, and other airports in similarly sized cities in Europe, and also during a period where the air traffic in Europe is rapidly increasing. Athens International Airport has grown from 11.7m passengers in 2002 to over 15m in 2006 and according to predictions based on the passengers served so far in 2007 the traffic will exceed 16.5m. In contrast SKG has very slowly increased its traffic the past 5 years. SKG PAX/year % Change AIA PAX/year % Change ,257,436-11,732, ,500, % 12,252, % ,620, % 13,662, % ,665, % 14,281, % ,797, % 15,079, % ,100,000(est) 8.0% 16,700,000(est) 10.7% Table 1: Comparison of traffic growth between SKG and AIA

20 The GDP per capita of Greece, which very often is being related to the patterns of traffic, has also been increasing quickly since Even though AIA follows closely the GDP trend, SKG lags significantly. GDP - per capita (PPP) Percent Change Year 2003 $19, $20, % 2005 $21, % 2006 $22, % 2007 $24, % Table 2: Greek Gross Domestic Product per Capita The need for a new airport The expansion of the runway at SKG and the new terminal building will help the traffic at the airport to grow faster but eventually it will reach capacity again. Then for the reasons previously explained a further expansion won t be possible and a new airport will have to be built. We thus believe that it by building a new airport now rather than constructing a new terminal and in the future a new airport will reduce the overall expenditures towards airport projects for Thessaloniki. Therefore, we propose a new airport be built for Thessaloniki entering into operation after 15 years, in 2022.

21 3 Design and planning principles for a new airport 3.1 Location requirements The new airport must, in first place, be free of all limitations of the current airport: land availability, noise impact, fog, wind coverage, mountains and ground accessibility. Concerning ground accessibility, it must be noted that building new infrastructure just for the purpose of serving the airport is a bad financial option, as has been discussed in class. Therefore, the location of the airport should be such, that it can be served well by the existing infrastructure. Therefore, a position to the west of the city where there are rich existing road infrastructure and railway lines seems to be a satisfactory one. In this way, both use of existing infrastructure and intermodality will be achieved. Finally, a long-term solution is sought. Therefore it must be assured that the new airport will not be close to densely populated areas and will be free from noise and environmental impacts to the extent possible. 3.2 Capacity requirements In order to make an estimation of the capacity requirements for a new airport we perform a forecast analysis so as to get an order of magnitude for the growth of air traffic in Thessaloniki. We also perform a design peak hour analysis used for the design and planning of the proposed new airport Forecasts The starting point of our analysis was to estimate the long term growth of traffic that would allow us to plan an airport based on an annual traffic that will eventually be reached by the airport in Thessaloniki. Unfortunately for our analysis we lacked of forecasts for the growth of the population and the GDP per capita in Thessaloniki, which are very often related to the growth of demand for air travel, hence the only option for forecasting the traffic was to fit a

22 curve through the historical data of the traffic in SKG. For this purpose we chose two different time periods and tried to fit the best curve through each. a) For the time period of 1974 to 2006 the best fit was an exponential curve with R-squared 96.3%. The growth rate of traffic for this curve was 5.2% per year. b) For the time period from 1990 to 2006 the best fit was again exponential with R-squared 97.5%. The growth rate of traffic for this curve was 3.6%, which means that the traffic in SKG has been growing much slower in the past 15 years than in the past 30 years. The first growth rate seems very large to be used as constant growth rate for a forecast of the next 30 years while the 3.6% seems pessimistic especially when comparing with other major airports in Greece, such as the Athens International Airport AIA and Heraclion International Airport HER, with much higher average growth rates. Thus we chose a value of constant growth rate of 4.2% that produces a forecast closer to the conservative estimate and close but smaller than the average growth rate of the traffic in AIA. The following figure shows the three different forecasts produced with exponential curves with constant growth rates of 5.2%, 4.2% and 3.6%. If the planning process for a new airport starts now, from our knowledge it will not start operations for at least the next 10 to 15 years. Hence, we are proposing a plan for an airport that will start operations in the early 2020s and with an horizon to reach capacity within ten years. Thus, as a first stage development we decided to plan an airport that will reach capacity in With our choice of forecast, the traffic will exceed 12 million passengers that year. So the design analysis that follows is for an airport of capacity of 12 million passengers.

23 Millions 30 Traffic Forecast 25 Annual Passenger Traffic % 3.60% 4.20% Figure 17: Traffic forecast at the airport of Thessaloniki Design Peak Hour Analysis The design peak hour of an airport should not be the busiest hour of the year. For this reason we chose as our guide day for the peak hour analysis the second busiest day during the average week in a peak month. The peak month in 2006, and as every year in SKG, was August and the second busiest day is Tuesday. Unfortunately there were no available data for the hourly passenger traffic in SKG so we performed an analysis based on the peak aircraft movements instead. This approach has the implicit assumption that the peak hour of movements and the peak hour of passenger traffic coincides. The table that follows shows the analysis for the second busiest day during the average week in a peak month in The hourly traffic is calculated as the percent of daily movements in one hour multiplied by total daily passenger traffic. This approach assumes that all flights have the same load factor and that the average aircraft capacity per hour is the same for every hour of the day.

24 Hour of the day Movements/ hr % of daily movements Hourly Traffic No of Arrivals No of Departures 0: % : % : % : % : % : % : % : % : % 1, : % : % 1, : % : % : % : % : % : % : % 1, : % 1, : % 1, : % : % : % : % Total % 17,383 Table 3: Peak Hour analysis From Table 3, we may observe that the peak hour traffic of the day is 1,412 passengers and coincides with the peak departure hour. However, the peak arrival hour is one hour earlier. The following table shows the ratio of the peak hours traffic for arrivals, departures and overall to the total annual traffic: Ratio Overall Peak Hour Traffic Peak Departure Hour Traffic Peak Arrival Hour Traffic Table 4: Conversion Coeficients calculated as the Peak Hour Traffic over the Annual Traffic From the above ratios (conversion coefficients) we can estimate the Design Peak Hour passengers for any forecasted annual traffic. Comparing to the values suggested in the de Neufville and Odoni 16 textbook, for an airport serving 12 million passengers per year the conversion coefficient is usually around , which is also true in our analysis. The following table summarizes the DPH from 2008 to 2040 and also shows

25 the peak arrival and departure traffic broken down by Schengen and non-schengen flights, by assuming that the current 3 to 1 ratio of Schengen to non-schengen flights will remain the same over the years (a very vague assumption that has to be incorporated to the flexibility of our design so that our terminal building will easily adjust to increases of non-schengen passengers): Total Peak Hour Traffic 1,537 1,819 2,153 2,547 3,015 3,568 4,222 4,996 5,913 Peak Arrival Traffic 1,064 1,259 1,490 1,764 2,087 2,470 2,923 3,459 4,094 Schengen Arrivals ,118 1,323 1,565 1,852 2,192 2,594 3,070 Non-Schengen Arrivals ,023 Peak Departure Traffic ,159 1,372 1,623 1,921 2,273 2,690 3,184 Schengen Departures ,029 1,217 1,441 1,705 2,018 2,388 Non-Schengen Departures Table 5: Design Peak Hours, based on annually forecasted traffic Aircraft Mix Assumption The current aircraft mix in SKG is 1% Heavy, 65% Large and 34% Small aircrafts. We assume here based on the fact that currently very few wide aircrafts can land in SKG but will be accommodated in the new airport the proportion of Heavy aircrafts will increase. However we assume that it will still remain lower than respective proportion in AIA (10%) which will always have many more intercontinental flights and is the main hub for two airlines. Hence we chose for the purposes of our analysis an aircraft mix: Aircraft Mix Heavy 5% Large 70% Small 25% Table 6: Assumed future aircraft mix

26 3.3 Limited forecast accuracy and future uncertainties The choice of the current airport traffic as a base One question involved in this particular forecast is that the traffic in the existing airport may not be the right base for making the forecast. The reason is that the existing airport cannot by default accommodate several types of aircraft and destinations. This makes it difficult to estimate both traffic type and aircraft type. To give an example, Athens used to have only 2 carriers connecting in to the East Coast of the USA until summer 2005: Olympic Airlines and Delta Airlines flying ATH- JFK. In summer 2006 a daily flight ATH-ATL was added and in summer 2007 one daily flight ATH-Newark and one daily flight ATH-PHL were added. In other words, in 2 years the traffic and the operations between ATH and USA cities has more than doubled. This could be an indication of a strong opportunity in this market. Thessaloniki, being the second biggest city could see some benefit from this dynamism with some seasonal or charter flights connecting to NYC if it had an appropriate runway. However, since this is not the case right now, this hypothesis cannot be tested. If it were true, it would change not only the total traffic, but also the aircraft mix, the share between Schengen and Non-Schengen passengers, potentially the security procedures or the pick-hour passengers as well. What is more, it will be explained in the next chapter that the proposed location not only satisfies the requirements of paragraph 2.1, but also introduced a new catchment area with a population of more than 400,000. This again can affect the growth of traffic Airline deregulation and uncertainty in the Greek market The deregulation of airlines took effect in Greece in Figure 4 depicts clearly this effect: The growth of traffic between 1997 and 200 was unprecedented. A similar trend was observed in all major Greek airports. Several small carriers emerged offering more competitive prices than the legacy carrier, Olympic Airlines, and new routes. This brought an initial enthusiasm and a big rise in traffic. However, by 2001 one airline, Aegean Airlines, has consolidated with Cronus and AirGreece and all other carriers have closed down due to debts or non-profitability. In addition to this, the new Athens airport entering into operation in 2001 and 7/11 brought about further

27 instability. Athens is the main source or destination of the domestic passengers of SKG. The new airport of Athens entered operation in 2001 with considerably bad conditions: considerably higher fees than the older one and very bad accessibility (in 2001). It may be part to this that the domestic traffic of SKG droped from to pax between 2000 and The traffic seems to have stabilized and growing on a good pace after As Table 2 shows the pace is not constant and this makes selecting the traffic growth for the exponential forecast particularly difficulty. For example, based on statistics for the first 9 months of 2007, we observe that the high traffic growth expected to be seen between 2006 and 2007 is partly because of an unforeseen rise in domestic passengers during summer. The domestic traffic appears to stabilize at 1,5 million pax (Figure 4) and show practically no seasonality (Figure 6, Figure 7). This rise could be explained by the increasing prices of sea traveling, so that many habitants selected to travel by airplane to their leisure destination. More importantly, the legacy carrier of Greece, Olympic Airlines has a very uncertain future. It is a money losing company, heavily subsidized by the Greek government, with imposed sanctions from the European companies and lawsuits filed by competing companies pending 9. Governments have been trying to restructure or sell the company for the last ten years. Olympic Airlines is one of the two major airlines operating in SKG. If it closes down or shifts its focus, both the traffic and the aircraft mix will be heavily affected. In another scenario with a competitive domestic market with two or more financially healthy cities, Thessaloniki, being the second biggest Greek city, may emerge as a secondary hub for medium-haul flights Low Cost Carriers Low cost carriers have just started entering the market of Thessaloniki: Until 2007, German Wings was the only low cost carrier operating in Thessaloniki. In 2007, SkyEurope, Easyjet, Central Wings and Wizz Air entered the market and EasyJet has recently added one more destination. This new market is still in infant state and has a marginal effect on the growth or traffic. However, if a low cost carrier market is 9 See for example

28 established, the demand can rise abruptly, as it was observed in other similar airports (eg. Valencia) Eastern Europe Traffic Comparing Figure 8,Figure 9 and Figure 10, one can see that traffic originating from or heading to Eastern Europe grows on a quicker paste than the other regions. Figure 11 demonstrated that the biggest part of this traffic is between Russian cities and SKG. However, this traffic is still small comparing to the Western European ones. If traffic between Russia and Thessaoloniki continues to grow at this paste and is not a saturated, then both the traffic forecast as well as the Schengen and non-schengen shares will change Aircraft movements Figure 5 shows the aircraft movements. There is a strong fluctuation in their number not very well correlated to the traffic. The correlation factor between the traffic and the aircraft movements is only 0.54 in the years between 1999 and This again poses new difficulties in estimating the aircraft movements in the future. 3.4 Flexible design and dynamic strategic planning For all the aforementioned reasons, the traffic of a new airport serving Thessaloniki is very uncertain. We believe that an accurate forecast is rather impossible to make. As it is usually the case, the forecast will be wrong and since there are here so many uncertainty factors involved, the forecast can be totally off. This does not weaken the thesis that Thessaloniki needs a new airport. To the contrary, it shows how necessary a new airport is for meeting all kinds of different demand scenario for which certainly the current airport is a constraint. The uncertainties involved show that a flexible planning approach must be adopted so that many different future demand profiles can be met. The operating authority of a new airport must be able to respond quickly to changes in traffic and traffic mixes without getting involved in costly and time consuming procedures like buying new land. On the other hand, the airport should not be overdesigned, as it was the case in Athens. Overdesigning increases unnecessarily operating and maintaining cost. Having the land handy but not building it until necessary, gives the option to use the

29 land for other purposes. E.g. one can lease it to department stores with medium-term contracts. Should the traffic never catch-up (surpass a certain threshold), those leases can be extended. The new airport needs to be able to respond to increases in traffic by having the land and the strategies ready beforehand to construct new terminals, contact or remote stands. It must be able as well to respond to changes in traffic mix, e.g. emerging of low-cost point-to-point flights. At the same time, we would like Thessaloniki to have a modern and functional airport similar to Athens. A luxurious very expensive building, like the proposed new terminal for SKG is not necessary for the needs of the city, and is not good for the growth of traffic, since eventually passengers will have to pay their share. A simple low-cost terminal was considered as an option for the main passenger building. However, it was decided to be unsatisfactory: Thessaloniki is the second biggest Greek city with important economic, industrial and political activities. Its airport has a robust share of domestic passengers throughout the year many of who are business and would appreciate contact stands and nice departure halls. Contact stands are dictated also by the weather conditions: During 3 months of the year, there are at least 7 days when the precipitation is more than 1mm 10. The rational is also cultural: Greeks appreciate a high level of service and a comfortable airport experience contributes to their preoccupation towards traveling. Since everybody seems dissatisfied with the current state of most Greek airports and everybody seems to appreciate the modern and functional design of Athens Airport, this experience could pave the way for Thessaloniki. Passengers should initially be offered a high level of service. After all, an airport replacing the older one and offering a worse passenger service will not be well perceived by the local population. If the traffic grows to expectations and reaches a level at which a separation of passenger needs is meaningful, the option for a low-cost terminal can be considered. Another option is to build the low cot terminal and operate both the old and the new airport for a certain amount of time. This has several pos and cons which will be analyzed in chapter Information from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service,

30 4 Proposed Location and New Airport Benefits The first step in our planning process of the new airport was to find a suitable location. Many articles in Greek newspapers have identified Klidi as the most suitable location for a new airport in Thessaloniki. Klidi is located 25km to the west of the city just off the main motorway that runs from the western coast to the borders with Turkey. The area around Klidi is primarily farmlands and there is a lot of space to locate an airport as large as Athens International Airport in almost any possible direction. Furthermore there are no mountains anywhere near that area as it can be seen in the map that follows. This area provides us then with the opportunity to direct the runway(s) in the most efficient way in terms of avoidance of crosswinds and minimization of noise to nearby communities. The following map shows in yellow line the area within which we tried to locate the airport and the red polygon shows our final choice. Our choice was based on a combination of facts: Be as far as possible from communities Be as close as possible to the motorway (orange line on the map) and the railway (black line on the map) Minimize the possibility of occurrence of a strong crosswind during take-off and landing. An area clean of constructions that will increase the expropriation cost. The following paragraphs explain in more detail the reasoning behind our final choice.

31 4.1 Expanded Catchment Area Figure 18: Satellite view of Thessaloniki and the surrounding area. The proposed location for the new airport is much closer than SKG to 8 major towns and cities out of which only one has an airport (Kozani, with just 4000 pax/year, domestic flights only). Citizens of these areas are most probably already served by the current airport in Mikra but we believe that they will only fly when it is absolutely necessary since the inconvenience to reach the airport is significant: They all have to commute through the city of Thessaloniki to reach the airport. An airport closer to these cities can open up new markets, especially towards Europe, and boost the demand for air travel from/to these cities. Many of the prefectures of central Macedonia have as a major point in their agendas the creation of a new airport at the west of Thessaloniki that will serve them 11. The following table shows that all eight cities are at most within a 130km from the proposed location but most importantly shows that the travel time from each city to the proposed location drops by 30mins to 1hr15mins /08/ /03/2007

32 Distances (km) to SKG to Klidi drive time to SKG Travel time (h:mm) drive time drive time to Klidi change train times to Klidi From Larisa :14 1:21 0:52 1:30 Katerini :19 0:30 0:48 0:40 Kozani :52 1:02 0:50 Naousa :46 1:15 1:31 Ptolemaida :20 1:15 1:05 Giannitsa :11 0:35 0:36 Edessa :50 0:48 1:01 1:05 Veroia :24 0:27 0:56 Thessaloniki Seaport :32 0:17 0:14 Thessaloniki Center :31 0:18 0:12 0:25 City Population Larissa 126,000 Katerini 56,400 Kozani 47,400 Naoussa 22,300 Ptolemaida 35,500 Giannitsa 31,400 Edessa 18,200 Veroia 47,400 Total 384,600 (Based on 2001 Census) Table 7: a) Distances to the major cities in the new catchment area and b) Population of the new cities Figure 19: Map of the Catchment Area of the proposed location (red bullet: proposed location, green bullets: new cities served)

33 4.2 The New Airport as Part of a Broad (Greek and Balkan) Transportation Network Thessaloniki is served by a large transportation network with very developed infrastructure that constitutes of: A large seaport with passenger transportation to the Aegean and Sea and cargo towards the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Three motorways; one that runs from the west coast of Greece to the West borders with Turkey (Egnatia Odos, E90 on the map), the Patra-Athens- Thessaloniki-Euzones axis (PATHE, E75 on the map) that connects the three largest cities of the mainland and the motorway that connects through FYROM to the rest of the Balkans and the East European highway network (E75). The railway network that runs towards the South through all the main Greek cities, towards the West into Turkey and on the North towards other Balkan countries (black line in Figure 18). Furthermore, the construction of a new railway is being planned by the Greek government parallel to the E90 motorway. That entire infrastructure is at the west of Thessaloniki and far from the current airport which is at the south east of the city segregated from the rest of the network and with very limited options of expansion. Hence huge infrastructure investments would be required to connect the current airport to this transportation network in order for the area to exploit very important economic opportunities through trading and enhanced business activities. In contrast, the proposed location for the new airport lies at the point of intersection of the three axle motorway system, only 25km away from the seaport and very close to the railway that connects Thessaloniki with Athens, through Larisa and other mainland cities. Furthermore, the suburban railway that runs from Thessaloniki to Katerini and through the area of the proposed location commenced operations in October 2007 and will be able to serve the new airport in less than 20 minutes. Hence no infrastructure improvements and extensions have to be made when relocating the airport. Moreover, as part of the development of Northern Greece and the aim to connect the country with the rest of East Europe, the construction of a railway has

34 been planned that will run parallel to Egnatia Odos, the major motorway ever built in Greece. Besides, cargo has been a sad story in SKG constantly dropping during the last decades. With the new airport though being located in the middle of the Balkan transportation network and being the most modern and large airport in the Balkans, large cargo carriers may potentially be attracted to utilize the new airport as a hub. 4.3 Environmental Issues and Noise Currently all ground transportations to/from SKG have to go through Thessaloniki, hence build up the traffic congestion in the city which in turn leads to increased green house gas emissions and deterioration of both the air quality and the noise in the city. The proposed location at Klidi, is far away from the city center as well as any other inhabited area. The closest community is 2km away (town of Klidi), west of the red polygon in Figure 18. All operations in the airport will be performed in a south to north direction as it will be explained in more detail in a later section so that all landings will fly over the sea during their final approach and the take off route can be accordingly adjusted so that no aircraft will fly above any community until a specific height is reached. 4.4 Development The relocation of the airport will relieve the current location of SKG, which may prove a valuable land in the urban area of Thessaloniki since it s one of the last coastal outlets of a city, which is rapidly expanding. Moreover, the new airport will be closer to the industrial area of Thessaloniki and that could improve both the cargo operations through the airport and the industries themselves. Furthermore, a new airport might give a great impulse to the prefectures of Central Macedonia and Larissa towards a rapid growth through enhanced business activities and creation of new employment opportunities.

35 5 Airfield design 5.1 Capacity envelope of one runway We have already developed a forecast for the aircraft type mix. Based on this and the separation requirements, we derive the capacity envelope for a single runway using the methodology toought in class. The buffer time is taken to be 30 sec which is rather conservative but seems to be applicable to the ATM environment of Greece. Runway Capacity Envelope 50,0 45,0 40,0 departures/hour 35,0 30,0 25,0 20,0 15,0 10,0 5,0 0,0 0,0 5,0 10,0 15,0 20,0 25,0 30,0 35,0 arrivals/hour Figure 20 The alternating arrivals and departures point is (27,27) which means that a single runway has a maximum capacity of 54 movements per hour. We calculate the practical hourly capacity of this runway (i.e., thenumber of landings that can take place on the runway with an average delay of 4 minutes per aircraft) using the methodologies of de Neufville and Odoni textbook. The practical hourly capacity is 46 movements/hour. 5.2 Verification of Adequate Airfield Capacity during DPH It is here necessary to check if the traffic during the DPH can be served by the airfield that we designed. Hence for a total of 46 movements per hour we may construct the following table:

36 Aircraft Type Mean Capacity Aircraft Mix Hourly Movements Capacity per aircraft type With Load Factor 0.75 H 260 5% L % ,360 S 40 25% Total 4,275 From the above analysis we may conclude that a single runway will be sufficient to accommodate the design peak hour traffic until 2032 when the DPH traffic is around 4,200 as it may be seen in Table Runway orientation As we have already seen the annual wind distribution for Thessaloniki looks like this: Figure 21: Yearly wind distribution in Thessaloniki 13 NW winds are the most frequent there is however a seasonal variation. The average monthly distribution for Februaries and Mays are depicted: 13 Source:

37 Figure 22: Wind distribution in Thessaloniki for the months of February and August 14 Nonetheless, the northern winds are the strongest. So, a NNW configuration should be a good compromise. Since, we do not have meteorological data of higher resolution; we propose 15/33 for the runway orientation. 5.4 Primary Runway length As already explained in chapter 2, SKG cannot accommodate certain types of aircraft and long-haul flights because of the lengths of the runways. A 3600 m runway is suggested so that the new airport can accommodate take-offs of any aircraft of type A-E, by satisfying reference field requirements for all aircraft A-E. Thessaloniki is not considered a potential target market of the A380. It is virtually impossible to emerge to an important hub, since strategic cities like Istanbul or Athens are located so close to it. It could be claimed, that 3600m is too long. But we do not want the bad experience of SKG be repeated: The runway length should not be a constraint for the growth of traffic and the destinations served. 5.5 Critical aircraft According to FAA advisory circulars, the airport must be designed to standards, which will accommodate the most demanding airplane (critical aircraft), which is currently using or is projected to use the facility on a regular basis (defined as Source:

38 operations per year or more). The identification of the critical aircraft is going to set the requirements for the width and separation of the runways and the taxiways. Even if we optimistically forecast that 5% of the aircraft will be heavies, it is not possible to calculate how aircraft of type D and E will be represented in this mix , which is an aircraft likely to operate in the new airport for dense medium-haul routes, is of type D (with a wingspan of 51.5m) On the other hand one may see aircraft of type E serving charter flights or on rare long-haul flights. In order to choose the critical aircraft we will choose the same approach as choosing the primary runway length: The airfield specifications should not limit the types of aircraft served. Therefore, we decided to take the aircraft of type E as the critical one. One must bear in mind that this airport should be a long-term solution for Thessaloniki. The runway and taxiway separations cannot be expanded, once the runway and taxiway are built. That is why we believe the critical aircraft should be E. After identifying the critical aircraft, the components of the airfield can be designed: Runways According to ICAO Annex 14 the runway width should be 45 meters. The runway safety are width should be 150 meters wide and extend for 300 meters after the end of each runway. The runway should be equipped with visual approach instruments so as to ensure a high availability Taxiways The primary runway will be served by an adjacent taxiway running through the whole length of the runway. The taxiway should be 23 meters wide and separated for 180m from the runway, since the runway needs to be instrumental. 5.6 Apron requirements According to the calculations in paragraph 6.1, 24 remote stands must fit on the apron. 20 of them are for aircraft of type III and 4 for aircraft of type D and E. This is a rather optimistic aircraft mix but the larger aircraft stands can be used for smaller aircraft as well and redesigned in the future.