Munich airport has announced plans to expand the floor area of its Terminal 1 building by 80,000 square metres. The €400m project, which the airport will finance from its own resources, is expected to add 6 million to its annual passenger capacity.
The main element of the work will be to add a pier to the terminal. This will link the terminal’s two modules and will extend 320m onto the western apron. It will have stands to handle up to 12 aircraft, including two equipped for the Airbus A380 superjumbo.
As well as the pier, the extension will hold the central security and passport control area and a marketplace with dining and retail space.
Its upper level will channel arriving passengers to the baggage reclaim, which it will also house.
The general planning will be carried out by a consortium of local engineering and architecture firms.
Markus Söder, Bavaria’s finance minister and chairman of the airport’s supervisory board, said: "The planned expansion is comparable with the construction of an entirely new airport. It will bring Terminal 1 right up to date.
"The added capacity will be equivalent to the annual traffic of a mid-sized German airport such as Hanover. This will help Bavaria’s gateway to the world remain competitive and keep pace with growth in demand."
Construction work is due to begin in 2018, and the pier will go into operation in 2022 at the earliest.
Munich airport is the is the second busiest airport in Germany, behind Frankfurt. It is the seventh busiest in Europe, handling 40 million passengers in 2015.
Image: Munich Airport (Wikimedia Commons/Citizen59)
