Enviable Records All Around

Incheon Int'l Airport celebrates its 10th anniversary as exporter of airport management know-how overseas



President Lee Chae-wook of the Incheon Int'l Airport Corp.

Incheon International Airport (IIA) celebrated its 10th anniversary on March 29 in a ceremony held at the airport’s lawn attended by a slew of dignitaries from both Korea and abroad led by Minister Chung Jong-hwan of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs and Sec.-Gen. Raymond Benjamin of the International Civil Air Transport Organization (ICAO). Also on hand were Incheon Mayor Song Young-gil, and President Lee Chae-woo of the Incheon International Airport Corp. among some 2,000 people from various areas related to airlines and airport management.
Minister Chung said in his congratulatory speech that the IIA will continue to do its best to maintain its position as a representative air hub in Northeast Asia, in which all the people in Korea take great pride and which is being benchmarked by other airports around the world.
President Lee in his congratulatory speech said with some 4 trillion won in additional investment, the airport will be expanded further by 2017 to expand its facilities in three steps to expand its annual passenger handling capacity to 62 million and cargo handling capacity to 5.8 million tons annually.
The IIA has won the top airport rating from the ACI for six years in a row since 2005. The time for entry and exit procedures at the airport has been cut to 12 minutes and 16 minutes last year, reduced from 29 minutes each in 2005, one-fourth of the 60 minute standard set by the ICAO.
Airport officials said the decrease in entry and exit procedure time helps to upgrade the services at the airport immensely, which have been instrumental in boosting the airport's standing in the international airport community.
Since its opening on March 29, 2001, the IIA has broken all kinds of records in operation. The airport began to operate in the black in 2003, contrary to the projection that it would turn a profit by around 2018 due to its enormous debts. It made the ACI's list of best airports, rising from sixth in 2002 to fourth in 2003, and the top position in 2005, where it has remained for the six years since.
ACI has 1,700 airports in 181 countries on its membership list and evaluates their services through customers using them annually and presents awards to the qualified airports. The awards are likened to Nobel Prizes for the airport industry.
The IIAC has been providing advice to other airport operators in many areas including airport management; the setting up of master plans; design of IT facilities; feasibility study on construction and management; inspection of design; consultations on setting up partnerships; and management support, thanks to its prestige from the ACI evaluation.
The IIAC's first overseas project came in 2009 when it dispatched experts to provide advice to the operators of the Arbil Airport in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq, where a Korean army contingent was stationed for a while. The region built an airport and requested IIAC support in various areas of airport management that can only come from experience. The IIAC signed a contract with the Kurdistan Regional Authority to provide advisory services for five years for the new airport's management for $31.59 million. IIA officials said the project is a result of the IIA? construction, which took 20 years, and another 10 years of its management.
Working with the Iraqi airport opened the door for the IIAC to provide advisory services to other airports around the world. Khabarovsk Airport, in the Russian Far East, asked the IIAC to become its consultant in December 2009 for its modernization project. The Korean airport sent its experts to the Russian airport to advise on such matters as demand for the airport, the scale of the airport runways, duty free shops and locations of airport facilities, and construction plans by stages, among other matters.
The IIAC might be given a chance to make investments in a new airport planned for the region. The IIAC earned $1.05 million last year on its consultancy on a new airport to be built in Cebu, the Philippines, for a year starting August 2010, which was followed by an agreement to export airport IT facilities to Cambodia. This past February, the IIAC signed a contract to set up a joint venture firm to provide consultancy to airports with Hainan Airport Group in Hainan, China, by investing 2.1 billion won for its stake. The joint-venture firm will provide advising services to four airports in China, including Hainan Airport, on such matters as improvement of services, management of commercial facilities and development of towns near airports, among others. nw