TAV Tunisia, a branch of the Turkish holding TAV Airports, in charge of the building of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Enfidha Airport, has signed yesterday an agreement with the African Development Bank (ADB) for a loan worth 70 million Euros.

TAV Tunisia which is raising a loan of 560 million Euros for the building of the Enfidha International Airport, as well as for the exploitation and maintenance of the Monastir International Airport, will receive the rest of the projected loan from other development financial institutions, including the International Financial Society, The European Investment Bank (EIB), Proparco and the OPEP Fund for international development.

The Enfidha Airport is the first concession granted to a company in the sector of air transport both in Tunisia and in the Maghreb. The airport which will have an initial capacity of 7 million passengers, has generated 2200 jobs in the construction phase, and is expected to create1200 employments during the exploitation phase.

The project which covers an area of 5,700 hectares will also have 3,600 m long runway, as well as an 85 metre- high control tower. The airport's parking area will have a capacity of 1000 vehicles.

Located between the tourist resorts of Hammamet and Sousse the airport is set to open in October 2009. It is Tunisia's 9 th airport and is expected to have a capacity of 20 million passengers per year by 2020.

Will domestic flights still depart and arrive at Monastir Airport?

The status as of now (before the new airport has opened) is, that Enfidha will concentrate the tourist/charter flights from Monastir and Tunis, leaving Monastir just for regular flights, specifically Nouvelair and TunisAir.

However, the initial capacity of Enfidha will not even cover a significant percentage of the charter flights, and also, since Tunisia signed the "Open Sky" accord, the number of charter flights to Tunisia is expected to increase.

So - for the forseeable future, I am very certain that charter flights will continue to land in Monastir. And what will happen once in 5 or 10 years - well, we shall calmly wait and see...

Tunis — During his meeting with the Tunisian Prime Minister Mr Mohamed Ghannouchi on Wednesday, the CEO of TAV (Tepe Afken Ventures), the Turkish holding in charge of the building and management of the new Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Enfidha Airport said that "in spite of the current global crisis, building works are moving ahead as planned and in good conditions".

TAV's CEO, Mr Mustafa Sani Sener added that that the project will be completed within the set deadline (October 2009) and possibly before.

TAV holding which is made of 17 enterprises, specializes in the management and building of airports.

The meeting took place in the presence of the Minister of transport, Mr Abderrahim Zouari.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200904220865.html

The opening of the new airport has been postponed into November - which leads to the thought that it will now open on the 7th November, which is a national holiday in Tunisia (marking the day when the current president took office in 1987) and will see president Ben Ali beginning his 5th 5-year term ... what a good moment to open officially an airport that happens to carry his name...

The presidential elections are to be held on the 25th October. But since, in the previous elections, the president has always been re-elected with more than 90% of the votes, it is safe to expect that the old president will be the new president as well.

is this airport the biggest in Africa ?

In theory, it could be - the airport has been built for 20 million passengers/year once the airport is completed, but probably, it will not reach this maximum capacity for many years to come.

So far, the biggest 5 airports in Africa are:

South Africa (Johannesburg): Tambo International Airport - 18,501,628 passengers
Egypt (Cairo): International Airport - 14,360,175 passengers
South Africa (Cape Town): International Airport - 8,078,589
Egypt (Sharm el-Sheikh): International Airport - 7,758,859 passengers
Egypt (Hurghada): International Airport- 6,743,199 passengers

Currently, Monastir caters ca. 4.5 million, Tunis 4 million and Djerba 2.6 million passengers per year, so the biggest 3 airports in Tunisia have right now together only 11 million passengers.

My estimate is that the Enfidha airport will be amongst the biggest 3 in the end with probably around 8-10 million passengers, provided that the tourist numbers continue to increase.

Mohamed Nouri Jouini, Minister of Development and International Cooperation said at the press conference held Thursday, February 11, 2010, at the headquarters of ATCE that the airport opening Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Enfidha will take place next April.

The minister said the delay is attributed to the permissions of the IATA, which have not yet been granted.

TUNIS, Feb. 25, 2010 (TAP) - Tunisair and TAV Tunisia signed on Thursday a partnership convention, under which the national flag carrier took possession of its new offices and inaugurated its activities at the new Enfidha-Zine el Abidine Ben Ali Airport.

The agreement was signed in Tunis by Messrs. Nabil Chettaoui and Haluk Bilgi, Chairman and Managing Directors of Tunisair and TAV Tunisia, respectively.

The convention includes an agreement between Tunisair group, Tunisair Technics and Tunisair Handling and TAV Tunisia.