New Sofia airport runway to open in Sept

Dnevnik Daily, 20th June 2006

The first passenger jets will land on the new runway of the Sofia International Airport in early September, said the airport's executive director Plamen Stanchev on Monday, June 19.
The surfacing of the 2.5 km runway will wrap up in late June with the first test landings and take-offs scheduled for early August.
The construction timetable has been agreed with Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al-Kharafi and Sons, the Kuwaiti company hired to build the new runway, and project consultant COWI.
The original hand-over deadline for the facility expired in February 2006. Construction had to be extended by several months after an underground landfill was discovered during excavation.
Bulgaria started negotiating last week with Strabag a solution to the disputes with the Austrian contractor over the collapsed ceiling in the new passenger terminal and the cave-ins in the tarmac of the new taxiways.
The transport ministry said it will not comment on the progress of the negotiations.
Strabag has twice requested that NACO, the Dutch supervisor/engineer of the project, approve the official hand-over of the terminal, an option provided under the construction contract.
According to unofficial sources, the Bulgarian side has accepted the request to ensure the terminal is operable towards the end of the summer.
The initial deadline for the completion of the passenger terminal was August 2005. It has so far been reset three times.
The 110 mln euro project is co-financed with 60 mln euro from EIB, 38.1 mln euro from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and 50 mln euro from EU's ISPA program.

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