Fraport is taking over 14 regional airports in March – Upgrade works to commence in October

Till the end of March the privatization of 14 regional airports will be concluded with Fraport Greece taking over their management. According to safe information provided at Ypodomes.com, the exact date will be decided in the following days. In the meantime, all last, outstanding issues between HRADF and Fraport will be sorted.

Currently, Fraport Greece is running several tenders in order to outsource various airport services. Tenders are related, among others, to the deployment of security and facility management services and concern all 14 airports.

Fraport plans to attach more weight to the image of the airports and that would be why it has devised a series of upgrade works that are set to start in October 2017 and finish 3 years later, by the end of 2020.

The contractor of these projects is, reportedly, Intrakat, which will undertake extensive upgrade works both in the airports’ terminals and, in some cases, on their runways as well. The most expensive upgrade project will be implemented in Thessaloniki’s, Makedonia Airport, with an estimated cost of 95mn euros while the overall budget is as high as 400mn euros (300mn of which come from EFSI funds). The upgrade project of the 14 conceded airports is one of the 5 Greek projects that secured Juncker Plan’s funds.  

The interiors of the terminals will be carefully design in order to promote their commercial success as retail, food and beverage and duty free shops are considered to be very central business activities of the airports. Of course this means that new jobs are going to be created on a local level too.

Another interesting piece of news, is Ryanair’s deal with Frankfurt Airport, managed also by Fraport, as this opens, quite possibly, new cooperation opportunities in Greece, not a long time after the air carrier’s criticism against the Greek Gov’t, arguing that the concession would bring even more taxes in the 14 airports.

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com

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