Dr Sani Sener, President and CEO, TAV Airports Holding, with Olivier Jankovec, Director General, ACI EUROPE.
TAV Airports Holding, which recently joined ACI EUROPE, operates three international airports in Turkey (Istanbul Ataturk, Ankara Esenboga, Izmir Adnan Menderes), two in the Republic of Georgia (Tbilisi and Batumi) and one in Tunisia (Monastir Habib Bourguiba). Olivier Jankovec, ACI EUROPE Director General, visited TAV in January to welcome them into ACI EUROPE and to strengthen relations. He also met with Turkish authorities to discuss capacity, ATM and slots issues.
Established in 1997, TAV is experiencing notable success, despite the global economic downturn, recording passenger growth across its portfolio of almost 20% in 2008 to 36 million – 23.5 million of those were handled at Istanbul Ataturk. Speaking at the ACI Airport Economics and Finance Conference in February, Waleed Youssef, Chief Strategy Officer, TAV Airports Holding, expressed further optimism, forecasting a 4% increase in traffic and a 10% increase in revenues this year, despite the economic downturn. “We are positive about 2009 and expect a good year,” he said. “We are also pleased to see that Turkish Airlines joined the Star Alliance in 2008 – we are seeing the benefits of that.”
Another positive development will be the summer opening of a second Tunisian airport – Enfidha, a Greenfield project TAV has been developing on a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) basis, with a 40-year concession period. The 75,000sqm terminal, designed by ADPi (a subsidiary of Aéroports de Paris), will have an initial capacity of seven million passengers per year. Four stages will take place throughout the period of operation, which will ultimately increase capacity to 22 million.
“We are also in negotiations with Riga Airport and hope it will be our first EU airport,” said Youssef. TAV, in a consortium with design and construction company Skonto Buve, is one of the shortlisted applicants in a tender to partner with Riga International Airport in its infrastructure development. Under a public-private partnership arrangement, the chosen partner will be expected to finance and manage the development, supervise construction and maintain and operate the airport infrastructure. The development will effectively mean construction of an entirely new airport integrating Riga’s existing facilities.
Youssef explained that TAV is also shortlisted in tenders at Pulkovo and Almaty airports.
