Since the opening of its new terminal in 2012, Bogota’s El Dorado international airport has become one of the fastest growing airports in Latin America.
By Santiago Gutiérrez
São Paulo’s Guarulhos is, without a doubt, the largest passenger airport in Latin America. Last year it saw the arrival of 36.2 million passengers, 9% more than in 2012 – this even before the massive passenger movement that came with the World Cup. Benito Juarez, the international airport of Mexico City, followed with 31.5 million passengers, an increase of almost 7%. Third on the list is Bogota’s El Dorado, which saw 25 million passengers pass through. While 30% less than its Sao Paulo counterpart showed a surprising traffic increase of some 14% – one of the largest among the largest airport region.
El Dorado is also the largest cargo airport in Latin America. In 2013 it moved 17% more tonnage than the super terminal at Guarulhos.
The case of El Dorado is not singular: it is part of a large increase in air traffic in Colombia overall. As seen in the table, in 2013 the number of passengers at Colombian airports all saw impressive growth: Medellin’s José María Córdoba Airport saw arrivals up 31%; Cali’s Alfonso Bonilla Aragón Airport up 22%; Cartagena’s Rafael Núñez up 21%; and Barranquilla’s Ernesto Cortissoz up 20%. According to Andrés Ortega Resz, manager of Opain, the concessionaire of Bogota’s airport terminal: “The country is doing well, so as more and more people advance economically, they are able to travel domestically and internationally. Likewise, airfares have dropped considerably. Everything adds up to increased traffic growth in Colombia .”
Since the opening of the new building and of international and national cargo docks between 2012 and 2013, El Dorado has established itself as one of the most modern and fastest growing airports in the traffic of goods, persons and routes within Latin America. Currently, it has 174,000 square meters for operation, three times more than the old airport. Of this, 18,000 square meters are intended for commercial areas.
The airport saw traffic of nearly 3 million passengers between January and April this year just in its international operations, representing an increase of 11.4% over the same period in 2013, according to figures from Civil Aeronautics (Aerocivil), the government agency that manages all airport operations in Colombia.
“This year we expect to be close to 27 million passengers (including domestic and international flights), with growth of between 6% and 7% for next year,” predicted Ortega.
As for cargo, international logistics companies are also taking advantage of speeding up the modernization processes of import and export. Only in the first quarter of 2014, El Dorado moved 189,751 tons of international goods, of which 125,251 were for export products. The old terminal barely registered the input and output of 120,000 tons of products throughout 2007, according Aerocivil.
However, the freight arriving and departing El Dorado is rather stagnant, the director of Opain estimated growth of just 1% in the last year. This probably owed to the appreciation of the peso against the dollar, which has led to a decline in exports of flowers, fruits and vegetables produced in the regions around the Colombian capital.
