San José Airport Will Count With Eight Additional Boarding Gates For the High Tourist Season

The high tourist season is upon us and workers at the Juan Santamaría International airport in San José are feverishly working to put the finishing touches to eight new boarding gates.

Although the work will be completed in the coming days in time for the rush of tourists, they will have no place to sit, as the chairs for the boarding gate will cannot be installed as the order will not arrive in the country in time.

The inauguration of the boarding gates is set for December 7 but the seats that will be used by passengers at the airport will not arrive until January.

To accommodate passengers, airport officials said they will redistribute the 1.000 chairs now in use in the terminal, providing some 125 chairs to each gate, 200 short to provide comfort.

Airport officials also plan to use folding chairs to replace the permanent chairs, especially in the lower concourse where there is little traffic, said Eduardo Chamberlain, Alterra's engineering director.

Chamberlain added that he did not know the reason for the delay in the delivery of the seats and notwithstanding the missing chairs, the boarding gates will be ready in time.

The December 7 date was set by officials of the Consejo Técnico de Aviación Civil (CTAC) - civil aviation - who ordered Alterra Partners, the managers of the airport, to have the four upper gates and four lower ones, located at runway level, ready by the date.

In addition to the gates, the immigration area will be expanded to allow more immigration officials to handle the expected large volume of passengers. With the expansion there will be 18 immigration posts instead of the 12 that are in use now.

The Café Britt store had to be closed to allow for the expansion of the immigration area.

The construction of the added gates began last August when Alterra added an additional 1.100 square metres (11,840 sq ft) of area.

Source: InsideCostaRica  11/30/2007