Vnukovo may start terminal expansion once handling 22 mln passengers per year - Vantsev
MOSCOW. June 14 (Interfax) - The construction of the second phase of Terminal A at Moscow's Vnukovo airport will be viable once 22 million passengers per year are being steadily handled every year, Vnukovo's co-founder Vitaly Vantsev said in an interview with Vedomosti.
"With the growth in passenger traffic, plans to build the second phase of the terminal are high on the agenda; instead of the old small terminal D, a new wing of the new Terminal A will be built," Vantsev said.
Terminal A is currently designed for 30 million passengers per year. Vnukovo handled 18.1 million people in 2017; the plan for this year is to reach 19.5 million people. "In order to maintain quality of service, this project [the second phase of Terminal A] should be started once traffic is steadily fixed at 22 million passengers per year," Vantsev said.
Responding to a question on when Vnukovo will reach its current maximum capacity, the airport's cofounder said that this "will depend on many external factors." "Let's take the most simple - VAT. We don't know what decision the government will make on VAT for the aviation industry; whether it will be raised or lowered. VAT currently remains at 10% for domestic flights. There are oil and petrochemical prices, geopolitical factors; these have a significant impact on aviation. We are always considering three scenarios." "Under the conservative [scenario] will we reach 30 million passengers over the next 10 years. But even this could be under significant risks. There are things that we cannot influence. For example, airlines: they come in, but they can also leave," he said.
He said that Vnukovo also requires airfield infrastructure development, primarily of aprons. "They [aprons] have not been completed, we need to finish building another 500,000 square meters. Large investments in the patrol-production road and the construction of waste treatment facilities are also necessary. The government didn't have enough money for all of this. In 2012 prices, these facilities cost 12 billion rubles," Vantsev said.
Vnukovo is the third biggest airport in Russia by passenger traffic, handling 18.12 million people in 2017. Vantsev said that consolidated revenue of the operator company was 10 billion rubles, EBITDA was 3.6 billion rubles and net profit - 590 million rubles.