Honduras starts building new international airport

The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has inaugurated construction works on the new international airport to be built in Palmerola, in the Comayagua department of the country's central-western region, which is also home to a US military base, the government announced in a statement.

The works are expected to be finished within 18 months and the airport would start operations by January 2019.

A consortium formed by local company Grupo Emco and Germany's state-owned Munich airport operator Flughafen München GmbH (FMG) is responsible for carrying out construction works after having been awarded a 30-year concession through a public-private partnership last December.

The project will require an estimated investment of US$163mn, some US$87mn of which will be provided by the construction consortium. The Spanish government will also provide US$53mn via its debt-conversion program for Honduras, while the remaining US$23mn will be funded by the Honduran government.

The Palmerola airport will have a 20,000m2 seven-jetway passenger terminal, a 1,500m2 cargo terminal, a 2,440m runway, a control tower, a multipurpose building to host relevant government offices, commercial areas and parking facilities. When completed, it will have the capacity to serve 1.5mn passengers a year.

According to the government, the airport will form part of a logistics corridor comprising other sites such as Cortés port and a network of highways that will serve to boost the country's economy and tourism industry. The funds that the Honduran government will provide for the project are part of the 48bn-lempira (US$2bn) budget that the current administration seeks to allocate to road, port and airport infrastructure in the country.

"The airport could help Honduras become the logistics hub of the Americas," the president said. "It could help define the course that the country will follow for the next 100 years."

Earlier in the year, the project faced problems relating to its concession terms and the future of Tegucigalpa's existing airport Toncontín, given that under the contract terms for Palmerola, Toncontín would have to stop handling flights once the new airport goes into operation despite the fact that the concession for its operation does not expire until 2020.