HEL expansion plans until 2020
 

Didn't see any mention of these here, so..

http://www.finavia.fi/en/news-room/n...and-under-one/

Plan is to have 20 million passengers per year in 2020. Some quotes:

"First, Finavia will enlarge the facilities for long-haul passengers and increase the number of spots for wide-bodied aircraft for transit traffic. After that, transit capacity will be further increased and the service level for European and domestic flights improved.

Finally, Finavia intends to expand Terminal 2 to cover the ground traffic area so that the check-in, security control and baggage drop will all take place in one departure/arrival hall.

Expanding the facilities to the area in front of the terminal will allow Finavia to overhaul commercial services and the existing parking and public transport arrangements. There will already be improvements in place by next year: train services to the airport will start in July 2015."

"The apron will be enlarged so that the terminal can be expanded and the capacity of the aircraft stands increased. In early September, Finavia began the demolition of the old water tower and heating plant located on Apron 1 at the southern end of Terminal 2. The two facilities have been disused for years. Rock blasting in the area will begin in November - December.

Planning work and preparations will take most of the year 2015 to complete. Construction of the long-haul facilities and the additional spots for wide-bodied jets will start in 2016."

The local newspaper had a story about this a few days ago and advertised 70 new or refurbished stores, cafes, and bars. Rather would see wide corridors and moving walkways... At least should get rid of the bottleneck between the old and new Non-Shengen terminal sections!

2020 - that is not very far away. They need to start digging right soon! ^

There is a video, briefly showing some conceptual renderings of the complete airport. Massive extensions, both on the T1 side and the T2 section. T1 is made longer and T2 gets 2 new wings.

T2 has some new wings. In the foreground an new pier with 8 new gates, connecting where gate 35 is today. One pier is extending from gate 38, with 5 gates.
(This view is from the west) :
http://i58.tinypic.com/16mp91.jpg

In the foreground T1 stretches outside this image, to me it looks like an extension of this pier too:
http://i57.tinypic.com/2vanw3k.jpg

Looks nice, though I did cringe slightly seeing all the planes parked on the stands.

An end for bussing, now that would be real improvement! :D

Given the distance from Gate 37 ,38 to exit I quite like the bussing.

Yeah, some moving sidewalks would be nice...

Comparing to current layout, it seems gate 35-37 is removed/relocated. Guessing that here is where some of the new carnivals will be located.

This is one strategy I am curious about - what is the benefit of consolidating the two terminals into one? For local pax departing, wouldn't it be better if one terminal was dedicated schengen and one was non-schengen? From what I can tell from the video, it looks like non-schengen pax still will be injected at schengen side airside.

I understand the benefit of not having to know which terminal you need to go to, but with one centrally located entryway the distance everyone need to walk will increase. A separate non-schengen terminal entry at the corner of Hilton would be perfect, right?

I read that to concern only T2, i.e. the current desks for KL, TK, SU, S7 etc. would all be in the same hall with AY etc.

As someone who mostly uses HEL for Schengen connections, bussing is very frustrating. Given that it is sufficiently common to be faced with an inbound AND an outbound bus, I'd rather walk the relatively short distances within the Schengen area. Very unpleasant...

As nice as the convenience of being bussed in the non-schengen area is, on the other hand personally I'd much rather board through a jet-bridge at my leisure and walk a few more steps on deplaning, rather than be sardine canned all the way there. :p

I wonder if they'd make them go round in circles in the shops before dropping you off! :D

Though seriously, in the current terminal building I cannot possibly imagine where they could be squeezed in.

Often find that in the evening I am bussed from the ARN-HEL flight to luggage area A and then have to walk all the way to gate 37 to be bussed to the same plane for the HEL-LHR flight. Now that is annoying :)

Well, there will be some more gates so maybe they get rid of the bussing to bigger planes.

What I don´t see from this plan is any increased capacity on Schengen side.

In the plan there are 26 gates for Schengen planes. Currently there are 22 gates for Schengen planes. This means that gate capacity is increased by 18% with the new plan.

In the new plan there are 16 non-Schengen gates. Currently there are 7. This means that the capacity on non-Schengen side is increased by 128%.

Unless the pax are all coming to Finland by ship, I would think that there are more bussing to be expected on the Schengen side to fill up the non-Schengen wide-bodies.

It also would be nice to see AB/Ryanair style walk-in boarding for the ATR-planes from the end of T2. It seems that in thefuture the ATR´s will be operated with bus-transportation to the plane, like now.

And while we are at this, also the planned train connection from Helsinki center and from Tampere are too slow :)

This is what I found: maximum 120 km/h, multiple stops and sharing tracks with other local trains, is that correct?
What is the projected travel time to central?

And I always laughed at KLIA airport "express", which feels like riding a tram. But that one actually does 120 km/h on average.