Does anyone know when this opens?

Didn't know they were opening a new one, but whenever it is, it can't come soon enough. This was easily the worst long-haul arrival area I have seen at any European airport.

Fall 2020.

SurlyBonds wrote:

Didn't know they were opening a new one, but whenever it is, it can't come soon enough. This was easily the worst long-haul arrival area I have seen at any European airport.

Agree completely - I flew into GVA in 2011 and was pretty surprised. Basically a hallway that looked like it was made out of tinker-toys, punctuated by a few jetways. The airside departure area wasn't much better - an industrial-looking room with seats and a couple of doors into the tinker-toy hallway. More in line with what you'd expect to find at a dumpy budget airport in the UK, not a city as wealthy and confident as Geneva.

Great to hear they're building a proper facility at last.

Cointrin330 wrote:

Does anyone know when this opens?

Should be completed in Nov.2020 and opening mid December 2020.
I'm going to visit the Aile Est today in a few hours. I'll probably post a few pics on here or the Swiss Aviation Thread.

Regards,

Patrick.

phofmannsair wrote:

Cointrin330 wrote:

Does anyone know when this opens?

Should be completed in Nov.2020 and opening mid December 2020.
I'm going to visit the Aile Est today in a few hours. I'll probably post a few pics on here or the Swiss Aviation Thread.

Regards,

Patrick.

Thank you. That's great.

jsnww81 wrote:

SurlyBonds wrote:

Didn't know they were opening a new one, but whenever it is, it can't come soon enough. This was easily the worst long-haul arrival area I have seen at any European airport.

Agree completely - I flew into GVA in 2011 and was pretty surprised. Basically a hallway that looked like it was made out of tinker-toys, punctuated by a few jetways. The airside departure area wasn't much better - an industrial-looking room with seats and a couple of doors into the tinker-toy hallway. More in line with what you'd expect to find at a dumpy budget airport in the UK, not a city as wealthy and confident as Geneva.

Great to hear they're building a proper facility at last.

Indeed, yes, the old concourse was actually a temporary structure, built in the 1970s and at a time when GVA handled even larger wide body aircraft than it does today, with the 747 among them as well as a good number of DC10s, L1011s, and so forth.

Here's a picture I took in December of the construction works of the new Terminal, called "Aile Est" (translates into "East Wing"). In front of it, you can see the "temporary" building for long haul (square white building), that will eventually be ripped apart.



And here a few pictures of how it will look like when completed in 2020:

While sorely needed it looks like another cheap addition.

What is that 4-5 story black building between this new concourse and the train station?

flyPIT wrote:

While sorely needed it looks like another cheap addition.

What is that 4-5 story black building between this new concourse and the train station?

The black building is the IATA Center. Not connected to the East Wing.

phofmannsair wrote:

flyPIT wrote:

While sorely needed it looks like another cheap addition.

What is that 4-5 story black building between this new concourse and the train station?

The black building is the IATA Center. Not connected to the East Wing.

Ok thanks. So it's just offices and meeting space? GVA is already a space constrained airport; it's amazing they would place that building right there on land that could have been used to expand the main terminal. Same for the arena. These two buildings could have gone anywhere else in the city.

flyPIT wrote:

phofmannsair wrote:

flyPIT wrote:

While sorely needed it looks like another cheap addition.

What is that 4-5 story black building between this new concourse and the train station?

The black building is the IATA Center. Not connected to the East Wing.

Ok thanks. So it's just offices and meeting space? GVA is already a space constrained airport; it's amazing they would place that building right there on land that could have been used to expand the main terminal. Same for the arena. These two buildings could have gone anywhere else in the city.

I agree, however these two buildings were planed in the 80s and built in the 90s. Capacity constraint was not an issue at that time.

The black building is mainly the luggage sorting facility, built n the 90s. So it has always been part of the airport infrastructure, and planned as such. They added a couple of office floors on top, IATA and Swissair back then. The luggage facility is now being expended and modernised for CHF 250mio (same amount in USD). The office floors haven been acquired by the airport. Probably a good place to shift the airport administration as they modernise the main terminal from 2025 onwards (the airport mentions a vertical expansion, so it is fair to assume that the office floors on top of the departure and transit hall will go). As for the palexpo hall 7, there was back then a lot of controversy on this building, it was rushed due to the demand for surface for the motor show. The airport expressed concern, but the immediate priority back then was to please the motor show.