More than 44,000 passengers came through Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International Airport in January, shattering all previous records.
Aviation and tourism officials, who had optimistically predicted a modest ten per cent increase on last January’s passenger traffic were caught by surprise by the 24 per cent increase from the same month last year.
“This kind of increase is very good news for us,” said Mauricio Cespedes, Executive Director, of the Guanacaste Chamber of Tourism.
“We had a meeting at the airport this week to discuss the idea of a concession to run the facility, and to decide what priority we should place on that,” he said.
“These figures certainly help us.”
Only once before, since officials began accurately collating airport statistics in 2001, has the number of passengers exceeded 40,000. That was in March of last year when 43,900 passengers arrived and departed the facility.
The announcement was a great start for the industry which saw figures slump for the first time in October last year, dropping 19 per cent. They now believe passenger movement in February will be around 46,000, up again, and could hit 50,000 in March. They expect nearly 400,000 for the full year.
As many as a million passengers could use the airport by 2017, the same statistics show.
The aviation industry’s future estimates for the country’s fastest growing airport came as the tourist industry confirmed 351,515 passengers had used the airport in 2006 --- 18 per cent more than the previous year.
The biggest user of the airport in January was Delta Airlines which carried 11,692 passengers, closely followed by Continental with 11,422 passengers. American Airlines carried 8053. There are now 40 direct, scheduled and charter flights between Liberia and the United States each week.
The Costa Rican government announced late last year it would up-grade and operate Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International Airport under a concession agreement.
The Minister of Public Works and Transport, Karla González, said she expected about $13 million to be spent on upgrading the terminal facilities, taxi-ways bringing aircraft to and from the runway, and parking aprons.
The tender document, outlining all the requirements of the concession, would be released next month.
“The airport concession process is an urgent issue,” Mr González said in making the announcement.
“In March we plan to put the concession out to tender so that the airport can start operating in accordance with the needs of the region.”
The tender will only include land-side facilities, such as the terminal area --- something local aviation officials had argued for. Others wanted to see the whole airport put out to concession, but Ms González seemed to quash that idea.
“All the operational aspects of the airport will remain in government hands,” she said. “We want to continue doing that. We will also continue to have responsibility for security.”
The exact design for the airport, which would come from the government, is still being discussed, but it is likely to be a terminal of between 8000 and 10,000 square meters, including offices, ticketing, check-in, arrival and departure gates, duty free shops and restaurants.
While Daniel Oduber Airport gets busier, Juan Santamariá International Airport continues to lose traffic. Liberia finished 2006 17.7 per cent higher than the previous year, while San José dropped 6.4 per cent to 2,656,072 arrivals and departures. That meant total traffic dropped about 118,000 passengers for the year, which is one of the first true measures that tourism in Costa Rica is dropping slightly.
Experts are still mystified as to the reason, although most point to a combination of factors --- poor roads, rising crime, the cost of gasoline and therefore airline tickets, plus the general increase in costs, particularly in Guanacaste.
Costa Rica’s neighbors, Panama and Nicaragua, have both been investing heavily in tourism, anxious to cash in on the lucrative Central American tourism market.
(Originally published by The Beach Times)
