Incheon International Airport’s newly opened second terminal is helping facilitate passenger processing at South Korea’s main international gateway, the facility’s operator said Sunday. (Image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Incheon International Airport’s newly opened second terminal is helping facilitate passenger processing at South Korea’s main international gateway, the facility’s operator said Sunday.
Since opening to the public Jan. 18, the passenger terminal that is used by Korean Air Lines Co. and planes of the SkyTeam Airline Alliance handled 1.62 million people, or roughly 27 percent of the little over 6 million people who boarded planes or transferred at the key transportation hub in the past month, Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC) said.
It said that while the number of passengers using the airport increased by 7 percent compared with the year before, there were no delays in processing passengers.
“There was a definite dispersion effect that reduced the processing time for people at the airport overall,” an IIAC official said. He added that the second terminal is now operating normally and is fulfilling its intended role of making the airport more competitive.
With the opening of the new terminal that was timed ahead of this year’s Winter Olympic Games being hosted by South Korea, Incheon airport now has the capacity to process 72 million passengers per year from 54 million in the past.
The alpine resort town of PyeongChang some 180 kilometers east of Seoul is playing host to the games that kicked off on Feb. 9 and run through Feb. 25.
The airport operator added that the new terminal offers more waiting areas for passengers that is critical for convenience and can help reduce passenger processing time by upwards of 30 percent.
(Yonhap)
