Bugesera's airport to cost $700m , is there any plan to use GNSS technologies?

The use of GNSS in aircraft is becoming increasingly common. GNSS provides very precise aircraft position, altitude, heading and ground speed information. GNSS makes navigation precision once reserved to large RNAV-equipped aircraft available to the GA pilot. Recently, more and more airports include GNSS instrument approaches. GNSS approaches consist of either overlays to existing non-precision approaches or stand-alone GNSS non-precision approaches.

From the East African business week , from now in 2010 to 2015 the new airport will be available, quoting Vincent Karega , Minister of Infrastructure of Rwanda
we know that the Environmental Impact Assessment have been completed sucessfully and a question would be the technologies to be used one of them being GNSS for air traffic management.

The New Bugesera International Airport to be located south of Kigali City, in the sparsely populated Nyamata district,in Eastern Rwanda, may cost US$700 million, according to the minister.

The multi million dollar project will be developed in phases. The first phase will cost about $450m and the second phase $250m.

"Phase I [one] will start with a terminal and a bigger runway, and facilities for fueling and security among many basic requirements of a world class airport," he said. Phase II will mean building the second runway.

The funding of the project, the minister told the press, will be through a Public-Private Partnerships (PPP's) model. The government has already recruited PricewaterhouseCoopers as transaction advisor to mobilize the private capital to invest in the project.

"They [PricewaterhouseCoopers] are still working out on the material and content. They will soon organize a roundtable on the Bugesera Airport. They are quite optimistic that we will attract many investors and good contractors," Karega explained.

With the technical and feasibility studies already completed, architectural design done, the minister is optimistic the airport should be ready by 2015.

A British engineering company, TPS Consult, is working on a detailed design.

"Construction only takes two years and the site is not a densely inhabited area so there will not be much time spent on compensating and relocating people. As soon as money is available work will start immediately," he assured.

He said $8.5m has already been spent on the feasibility studies, architectural designs and review by International Civil Aviation Organization.

"As always, Government has taken the initiative to foot this bill in its totality so as to kick start the project," Karega said.

The construction comes at a time operators at Kigali International Airport are complaining about facilities that cannot handle the growing number of passengers and operators.

In 2004, the airport served 135,189 passengers. In 2008, the airport served about 300 000 passengers but the number of passengers is projected to rise..

Signs are already showing that during peak days the airport is overwhelmed both by the traffic and planes that land and take off.

"During peak days, when there is in-coming traffic from SN Bruselles, Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines at once and it becomes almost impossible to handle the traffic, to find parking of the aircrafts and refueling of airplanes," Karega says.

Isaac Wambua, Kenya Airways Country Manager, Rwanda says the New Bugesera International Airport will reduce pressure on the Kigali International Airport.
If GNSS technolgies will be used , it will be another mile stone in technology development in the East Africa towards an ICT driven economy as it has been experienced all over the world