GHOST TERMINAL

THE FORGOTTEN AIRPORTS OF THE FUTURE - WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEXT BIG HUBS?

-  JOSEPH PHELAN

AROUND the world, a surprising number of airport megaprojects once pitched as the future of aviation now sit underused, mothballed or repurposed entirely. Built with bold ambitions and big forecasts, these facilities promised gleaming terminals, expansive runways and projections of millions of passengers that, ultimately, never materialised.

From Canada’s Mirabel to Spain’s Ciudad Real, these airports of the future were unravelled by a complex mix of miscalculations, political ambition and changing travel patterns, leaving behind costly reminders of just how quickly the aviation landscape can shift.

As Dr Shoshanna Saxe, associate professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, notes: “We can forget that time exists. Sometimes we build projects to solve today’s problems, but if they take 25 years to complete, they may not be suited to the world they open into.”

CIUDAD REAL: SPAIN'S BILLION-EURO GHOST HUB

Perhaps the most infamous example of an overbuilt, underused airport is Ciudad Real International in Spain. Constructed during the early 2000s aviation boom, it was pitched as an overflow hub for Madrid-Barajas, with a €1.1 billion price tag, a 4,100 metre long runway capable of handling any aircraft and visions of hundreds of thousands of passengers per year.

From the outset, the project was stymied by poor planning. Located some 200km south of Madrid, the airport was simply too distant to effectively serve the capital's travellers. Plans for a high-speed rail link to bridge this gap never materialised - only a lonely pedestrian footbridge was actually completed.