The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has been appointed to manage Abu Dhabi International Airport on an interim 18-month contract.

The Chairman of Abu Dhabi Airports Authority Khalifa al-Mazrouei told Reuters today that the CAAS, which operates Changi International Airport was chosen ahead of BAA and Vienna International Airport (Flughafen Wien) to manage Abu Dhabi's core facilities, including the existing terminal and the apron.
Abu Dhabi is currently investing $6.8bn on expanding and replacing its airport after launching Etihad, its own national airline. The airport expects to handle around 5.6m passengers this year, with capacity to be enhanced for an annual 20m passengers by 2010.
As already reported, Abu Dhabi Duty Free (ADDF) believes that its annual duty free sales level could reach as high as $225m if traffic reaches the forecast 12m level by 2010. Managing Director Mohamed Mounib told TREND last month: ?The total business for us today is almost $160m. What we reported was duty free and non duty free commercial activity which reached almost $100m, so we are almost at this figure, although we went back a little bit this year because of the first six months of the year, but maybe next year we will come to about $115m to $118m and that is the budget for next year.?
Mounib said that the dip in sales in the first half of this year was due to the fact that Gulf Air moved from Abu Dhabi International Airport this year and the Emirate?s relatively new national airline, Etihad Airways, spent the first six months picking up new routes and the traffic that Gulf Air left behind.
By April 2008 ADDF will move into Terminal 3 and Mounib says that those suppliers who support the operation in T3 will have the opportunity to move into the bigger picture when Abu Dhabi?s brand new 220,000sq m airport opens at the end of 2010.
?We have given a study to the owners [Abu Dhabi Airports Company-Ed] to look at the space that we want to look at and occupy and basically what we said to them was that if they deliver the numbers of passengers they have promised, which is adding a million passengers every year to the portfolio of this airport, by 2010 we should have 12m passengers in this airport. If we have 12m then we are looking at $225m to $230m.?