Official groundbreaking ceremony for Terminal 2 satellite facility at Munich Airport

(from left to right) Michael Odenwald, Permanent Secretary with the German Ministry of Transportation, Building and Urban Development, Dr. Michael Kerkloh, CEO of Munich Airport, Carsten Spohr, member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Dr. Markus Söder, Bavarian Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Munich Airport, Dieter Reiter, the head of the City of Munich Labor and Economy Office, Thomas Klühr, Lufthansa Executive Board member in charge of Munich Passenger Operations and Direct Services, and Norbert Koch, with Koch + Partner Architects.

Exactly 12 years and nine days after the groundbreaking ceremony for Munich Airport’s Terminal 2, the expansion project for that facility officially began today. With 200 invited guests in attendance, the first sod was turned over to mark the start of construction of the new satellite terminal. The new terminal building represents a major step forward by Mu-nich Airport (FMG) and Lufthansa to ensure that Terminal 2 can stay on track with the out-standing development achieved since it opened in 2003.

(from left to right) Michael Odenwald, Permanent Secretary with the German Ministry of Transportation, Building and Urban Development, Dr. Michael Kerkloh, CEO of Munich Airport, Carsten Spohr, member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Dr. Markus Söder, Bavarian Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Munich Airport, Dieter Reiter, the head of the City of Munich Labor and Economy Office, Thomas Klühr, Lufthansa Executive Board member in charge of Munich Passenger Operations and Direct Services, and Norbert Koch, with Koch + Partner Architects.

The satellite facility will take the Bavarian hub to a new dimension: The airport will gain handling capacity for an additional 11 million passengers per year. This will enable it to maintain its current high quality standards as a connecting hub even with the anticipated traffic volume in the future. “In most cases it takes a booster rocket to launch a satellite – but in Munich the time-tested cooperation of FMG and Lufthansa is enough,” said FMG’s CEO Dr. Michael Kerkloh at the ceremony. New capacity for 11 million passengers – that almost matches the entire traffic handled by Munich Airport when it opened in 1992, noted Kerkloh. Thomas Klühr, Lufthansa Management Board member in charge of Munich Pas-senger Operations & Direct Services stressed the enormous importance of the satellite fa-cility for Munich: “With today’s groundbreaking ceremony, we have cleared one of the most important infrastructure projects in the Lufthansa Group for take-off. This satellite ensures that we can continue offering our customers excellent quality in the future. At the same time, Munich will secure its position as a player among the international premium hubs. The satellite will continue the Terminal 2 success story.”

The expansion of Terminal 2, which is jointly operated by FMG and Lufthansa, is needed because its capacity of 25 million passengers per year is already stretched to the limit. The new satellite facility will be built on top of the baggage sorting hall on the airport’s eastern apron as a functional element of Terminal 2. The pier will have a length of more than 600 meters and 52 departure gates. With 27 aircraft parking locations, it will more than double the number of positions with passenger gangways linked to the terminal. The satel-lite is not a standalone terminal because it has no landside transportation links. Passengers arriving or departing through the new facility will use the check-in and ticket desks and baggage pick-up area in Terminal 2.

The two buildings will be linked via an underground personal transportation system (PTS) – a kind of subway passing through an existing 400-meter tunnel beneath the apron. After check-in and security screening in Terminal 2, passengers will be just a few steps from an underground station, where fully automatic trains will take them to the satellite in less than a minute. As in the main Terminal 2 building, the trains will stop at the center of the satellite facility, ensuring that all departure gates are nearby. The simple layout and clear signage in the satellite will also enable all connecting passengers to reach their flights quickly and eas-ily.

The Canadian rail transportation system manufacturer Bombardier will build the two-track system, in which three driverless trains, each will four wagons, will operate, running at speeds of up to 30 km/h. The system will have the capacity to move up to 9,000 passen-gers per hour in each direction. The routing of passengers and the layout of the platforms and train configurations will ensure that three passenger streams can be moved separately. This is an important distinction, as travelers – depending on their destinations and the start-ing point of their trips – are subject to different immigration controls and security screening.

The new building, which is due to go into operation in 2015, will offer all important services in a total area of more than 125,000 square meters (over 1.3 million square feet), including two Lufthansa Service Centers with 24 transfer desks and 42 passport control stations for passengers entering and leaving the country. The five Lufthansa lounges in the satellite will double the number of lounges available in and around Terminal 2. To be set up at the cen-ter of the satellite on both passenger levels are attractive marketplaces, built around the existing ground traffic control tower. Here passengers will find a broad range of shops and restaurants covering a total area of more than 9,000 square meters (100,000 sq.ft.). With the open-concept layout, replete with natural light, and the wide variety of shops in the marketplaces, the satellite will offer an excellent passenger experience. The design applies sustainable construction concepts that will mean a 40 percent improvement in the carbon footprint as compared with the two existing terminals.

Work is already in full swing: Various preparatory steps will be finished by the the end of May of this year, when structural work is set to go ahead on the southern side. This will be followed by the excavation of the central area of the satellite, which will start with a base-ment. Beginning in late July 2012 the first connecting structures will be built for the passen-ger gangways, and as of early 2013 the facade of the satellite terminal will be taking shape. Interior finishing work and technical equipment will follow starting in the spring of 2013.

As in the original Terminal 2 development, the investment costs of 650 million euros for the new building will be shared by FMG and Lufthansa on a 60:40 basis. The architectural firm handling the general planning of the satellite will be the Munich firm Koch + Partner, which already performed this function in the Terminal 2 project.