MARIGOT--"After spending so much money to reconstruct the airport, if in the end we cannot attract new regional airlines then the purpose would have been defeated," commented General Councillor Guillaume Arnell during an interview on construction work on the third phase of the Grand Case airport. This phase involves construction of the new departure hall.
According to Arnell, a number of airlines have expressed interest in operating daily flights out of the Grand Case airport and this is already a very good sign. He added that efforts would be made to woo Caribbean Star and Caribbean Sun airlines to Grand Case, because the new airport structure will be fully equipped to accommodate such flights.
"We will be offering attractive packages to these airlines to ensure that they use the new facility," Arnell said. According to him, the new airport was designed to accommodate 300,000 passengers per year and will also be equipped with night landing facilities. For him, it is very important to try to bring new airlines to Grand Case because this will also mean creating more jobs for locals in a number of different areas.
Arnell said he was satisfied with the way work was progressing on the project and hoped it would be operational in the next six months. According to him, once this phase is finished the next step will be to work on the second phase which will be constructing the airport shopping centre, a number of small locations to accommodate different stores and boutiques.
Contractors went from phase one to phase three because the airlines had submitted a request stating this would greatly assist in handling the present congestion.
Representatives of the General Council will be meeting with the Municipality during the course of next week to work on a new proposal for the interim management of the airport before it is officially handed over to the Commune, as promised in a recent agreement.
Arnell said the Council was not willing to hand over the structure before the end of the reconstruction project, because it would be unfair to hand over an incomplete structure to the people of French.
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