Stage One of Christchurch Airport's new terminal opens for business

Christchurch Airport has announced that Stage One of its new terminal building is complete and fully open to the public. “We’re very proud of our spacious new facility to welcome visitors to Christchurch and the South Island,” said the CEO of Christchurch International Airport, Jim Boult.

“Last week the integrated check-in hall opened, where all passengers, both international and domestic, check in. This morning the first floor opened, which has a fabulous food court, with a great variety of quality food, as well as many retail outlets. We wanted to dramatically improve the traveller experience at Christchurch Airport, and this has done that – and more,” stated Jim Boult.

“We’re pleased to say our opening has gone without any hitches – following lots of planning and preparation,” noted Jim Boult. “This project has involved 18 months of intensive construction and testing to ensure everything would work from Day One.”

Stage Two of the construction project began this week and will be complete in September 2012. It involves the demolition of the former domestic terminal, the construction of a new baggage claim area and improvement of aircraft parking areas.

Facts and Figures:

· The old terminal at Christchurch Airport opened in 1960, and had 200,000 passengers a year; in 2010, Christchurch Airport was a gateway for 6 million travellers.

· A major feature of the new terminal is a new $15 million state-of-the-art baggage handling system, which is 750 metres long.

· The integrated check-in hall has 58 check-in counters as well as numerous self-service kiosks.

· The food stores on the first floor will include Sakura Sushi, Noodle, Healthy Habits, Burger King, Underground Coffee and The Coffee Club.

· Hawkins Construction Limited was the main construction company working on the project; there were also hundreds of sub-contractors.

· Mainzeal Construction was the main construction company which built the Regional Departures Lounge.

· The total cost of the terminal development will be $237 million. That figure includes the multi-storey car parking building, the terminal itself, the ground boarding lounge, a pedestrian plaza and the airfield works to reconfigure the aircraft parking. This has been one of the largest infrastructure projects in the South Island.

· So far $161,428,000 has been spent on the project; it is exactly on target in terms of budget.

· Between 200 and 400 workers have been active on the construction site, rain or shine, each work day for three years.

· Over the last year, more than 300 chicken burgers and 250 chicken rolls were consumed on the site each week.

· The amount of steel in the building is equivalent to the weight of seven Boeing 747’s.

· The amount of concrete used would fill 3.5 Olympic sized swimming pools.

· The quantity of tiles would cover two rugby fields; the carpet would cover one rugby field; the check-in floor alone consists of 23,364 flooring tiles.

· Enough paint has been used to draw a line from Christchurch to Invercargill.

· A wall of bluestone basalt from Timaru, 125 metres long, has been installed behind the full length of the check-in counters. This dark, textured basalt has been subtly etched to represent the braided river system which Canterbury is famous for.

· The new airport terminal showcases exterior walls of Damplon, a material which can be lit in different colours at night.

· The new building has 2 1MVA diesel powered generators which will keep the terminal fully functional in a network outage. They can also be used to provide load control to save electricity usage.

· In the new building, there will be no fossil-fuel boilers, instead 3 chiller units will be used to heat pump units whereby artesian water is used for cooling and heating the building and then recycled back into the ground.

· The terminal will also have low energy requirements through use of several building management systems, such as: automatic turn-off of lighting in unused areas, daylight control, power factor correction, high-efficiency lighting throughout the building, wind lobbies, thick window glass for heat retention in winter and to provide solar shading in the summer and air-to-water heat pumps for generation of hot water in public areas.