It may have surprised some that Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport overtook São Paulo Guarulhos and Mexico City Juarez International airports in 2024 to be Latin America’s busiest but the Colombian airport had been narrowing the gap on them for several years now.
In common with many airports of its size and scope in Latin America El Dorado has been concessioned for quite a few years, to a multinational consortium within which the shareholders have waxed and waned and out of which the Colombian company Odinsa is the main partner and strategist.
El Dorado has grown rapidly but that growth has overtaken the ability of the infrastructure to handle it.
Odinsa is now tasked with overseeing a huge expansion of the airport including a doubling of the terminal size and the extension of one of the two runways to what would be one of the longest in the world.
At the same time a decision has to be taken on the location and actual construction of a second, reliever airport for the city-region, dubbed El Dorado II, and which is now in at least the seventh year of deliberation and it is one that must take into account the ever evolving nature of the air transport business, for service providers and customers alike.