Bermuda’s New Airport

Arriving: Bermuda’s New Airport

Next year, you will be arriving and departing from a new state-of-the-art airport terminal

When you landed at L.F. Wade International Airport you may have noticed our new, unmistakable landmark. Bermuda’s new airport is nearly complete and, if all goes according to plan, will be open by July 2020.

Shazar Hack, technical director at Skyport, says, “Right now, we are carrying out the interior finishing work, such as the framing of drywall partitions. Tilework for the flooring is due to start, and the major interior finishing work should be completed by the first quarter of 2020. “The concessions tenants would then come in and fit their spaces, including areas such as duty free, food and beverage, and airline offices.”

“A new concrete apron where the arriving aircrafts park at the terminal building has been built, to take the weight of airplanes, while ‘sense of place elements’ will soon be added as part of the interior finishing works.

“We will bring many elements of Bermuda into the building. We have just finished a kite competition, and the winners will have their designs placed above the immigration arrivals space in addition to creating hanging elements,

View of Pre-Board Screening Area and Departures Check-in Area under construction

like the birds of Bermuda, in the departures hall,” says Mr. Hack.

At the “go-live” date, all operations will have to be moved from the existing airport to the new building, and the plan is to do it overnight, under the Operational Readiness Airport Transfer programme, also known as ORAT.

Mr. Hack explains, “Noncritical items will be moved in the weeks before it opens, but people and those things that cannot be moved in advance will be moved overnight.”

“Everyone will be trained to know their roles and responsibilities when the building starts up, and there will be large public information exercises leading up to opening day, about where to go and what to do.”

“We will also have trials, some open to the public, where volunteers can act as passengers to help us test the systems. For instance, there will be a test when someone leaves a piece of luggage unattended to test security protocols. All trials will be monitored and observed, with each a trail followed by a debrief.”

Mr. Hack adds, “Overall, we are happy to report that the construction is on schedule and on budget, and we expect the new terminal building to be completed by the summer of 2020.”

A great deal of thinking and research has gone into assessing the size of the building so that it’s not too big nor too small. “It will be able to comfortably handle the peak loads of incoming and outgoing flights between mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and, in the long term, if the need arises to expand, the plans are in place to extend the building accordingly,” says Colin Campbell, regional director of OBMI Architecture. “It is interesting to note that the new terminal is almost exactly the same length as the existing building if you were to measure from the departures area though to the arrivals area. So materially, it is not bigger, it is the same basic area under one roof, but of course designed around today’s traveller and today’s technology. You have to remember that our current airport was built in another era, and it becomes an inefficient exercise to try to adapt such an old building, whose design purpose was so much different from the needs of today. Ticketing is just one small example that an airline passenger will be able relate to. Remember that we’re now not only using kiosks to check in for our flight, we’re also ticketing our own baggage.”

When it is finished the ground floor – approximately 182,000 square feet – will house the new departures hall, baggage and passenger screening for departures, arrivals concourse with customs areas, retail facilities, and restrooms.

The second floor – about 89,000 square feet – will house the US and international hold lounges, retail shops, and dining areas.

Importantly, considering Bermuda’s unpredictable weather, there will be six covered and accessible passenger boarding bridges for arrivals and departures.

Given the possibility that the current trend of tourism and hotel capacity growth continues, the airport is being constructed in such a way that it is easy to add additional structures at either end of the terminal.

Pre-Board Screening Area and Departures Check-in Area under construction