St Lucia’s New Airport Project Gets Finally Underway

It has been a project 20 years in the planning with a number of false starts, but a redevelopment of St Lucia’s international airport is finally underway, according to the minister for tourism, Dominic Fedee.

The Hewanorra airport on the Eastern Caribbean island currently operates a single terminal for both domestic and international arrivals and departures and it can get chronically overcrowded on busy weekends.

The plans, which will cost in excess of $100 million, include expansion of the existing terminal and construction of a new terminal with state-of-the-art facilities, including air-conditioning, restaurants, shops and executive lounges.

At the moment St Lucia receives 386,000 passengers annually, with nearly 70,000 of those arrivals from the UK.

With the new airport the government hopes to expand this number to more than a million a year. Previous governments have attempted the expansion but have historically struggled to raise the finance.

Last year the government implemented a $35 (£27) airport development tax on each arrival, which has been ring-fenced to finance a loan from the Taiwanese government.

The construction of the project is currently out to tender with work scheduled to begin in the first quarter of next year with the aim of being fully operational in the third quarter of 2020.

Source: The Telegraph