Unit 3Suvarnabhumi AirportSuvarnabh

Unit 3
Suvarnabhumi Airport
Suvarnabhumi Airport has an area of 20,000 Rai (8,000 acres), situates on Bangna-Trad Road and is 25 kilometers far from Bangkok. The name Suvarnabhumi was chosen by King Bhumibol Aduyadej and refers to “The Golden Land”. It was officially opened for limited domestic flight service on September 15, 2006, and opened for most domestic and all international commercial flights on September 28, 2006. The building was designed by Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn Architects. The airport has the world’s tallest free-standing control tower (132.2 meters or 434 feet), and the world’s fourth largest single-building airport terminal (563,000 square meters or 6,060,000 square feet).
Suvarnabhumi is the fourteenth busiest airport in the world, sixth busiest airport in Asia, and the busiest in the country, having handled 53 million passengers in 2012, and is also a major air cargo hub, with a total of 96 airlines. On social networks, Suvarnabhumi is the world’s most popular place where Instragram photographs were taken in 2012.
The Passenger Building comprises 7 floors and 2 basements.
1st Floor: Bus and Taxi Services
2nd Floor: Domestic and International Arrivals
3rd Floor: Shops, Restaurants and VIP Rooms
4th Floor: Domestic and International Departures, Immigration, Customs, Airline
Check-in and Airport Information Counters
5th Floor: Thai Airways International Public Company Limited and Star Alliance
Offices
6th Floor: One Stop Service Center of Suvarnabhumi
7th Floor: View Point Basements arranged for Airport Express Station, Airport Express Platform and areas for luggage conveyor transport system
Costing an estimated of 155 billion baht, the airport has two parallel runways (60 meters wide, 4,000 meters and 3,700 meters long) and two parallel taxiways to accommodate simultaneous departures and arrivals. It has a total of 120 parking bays, with five of these capable of accommodating the Airbus A380. The main passenger terminal building, with a capacity of handling 76 flight operations per hour, co-locates the international and domestic terminals, though assigning them to different parts of the concourse. In the initial phase of construction, it is capable of handling 45 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo per year. Above the underground rail link station and in front of the passenger terminal building, there is a 600-room hotel operated by Accor Group under the Novotel brand. Between the airport hotel and the terminal building, there are two 5-storey car parks which can keep 5,000 cars altogether.