Bahrain to build airport on manmade island

Reports have emerged that Bahrain has plans to build the proposed airport on a manmade island off the north coast.

The Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications Kamal Ahmed had earlier confirmed the plans for starting a new airport, as reported by DT News earlier quoting the CEO of Bahrain Airport Company (BAC).

This would be the second airport in the Kingdom, after the Bahrain International Airport, which is undergoing a major $1 billion expansion programme to quadruple capacity from four million passengers per year to 14 million. Mohamed Yousif Al Binfalah, The CEO of BAC, earlier said that having an advanced infrastructure will help us attract more air traffic and will aid the growth of our national carrier.

In an interview with Arabian Business, Kamal Ahmed said the kingdom is also progressing plans to build an entirely separate airport on a purpose-built island in the waters off Bahrain.

Ahmed told the newspaper that the Ministry had commissioned a technical study to determine the exact location of a second airport – and that this was completed at the end of last year.

“The report is not in the public domain and Ahmed did not reveal the exact chosen location, but said it was in the sea north of Bahrain,” Arabian Business said.

The modernization programme of the existing airport is in progress, including the works of a new terminal. According to officials, as many as 24 aircrafts canbe handled simultaneously in the new facility. There will be 24 screening machines in place of the existing three screening facilities in the airport. They have expressed confidence that the single runway model will be able to serve the traffic for the next two decades.