Bucharest Airport spends EUR 48 mln on land for new terminal

The Bucharest Airports Company, which operates Romania's biggest airport - Henri Coanda in Otopeni, announced on Thursday that the expropriations for the new terminal approach completion, as the last details before the payment of compensations to the landowners are being addressed.

The company will pay total compensations worth RON 236 million (EUR 48 mln) to almost 1,000 landowners affected by the expropriations, News.ro reported.

The new passenger terminal at the Henri Coanda International Airport is part of a large development project that will also include a platform, moving walkways, access roads, parking lots, and buildings. The total investment is estimated at over EUR 1 billion.

The airport, which serves Romania's capital Bucharest, currently has a single terminal consisting of several buildings. The new project will constitute the airport's second terminal and will be developed a few hundred meters from the current terminal. The project is scheduled for completion in five years.

In related news, traffic on the Henri Coanda International Airport in Otopeni dropped by 70% in 2020 compared to the previous year, to 4.4 million passengers. The drop was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions, which strongly impacted the tourism industry.

Most of the traffic in 2020 was recorded in the first two months of the year before the pandemic started. In April, during the full lockdown, only 20,000 passengers transited the airport, according to data from the Bucharest Airports Company quoted by Ziarul Financiar.

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