Dubai has established a new company to manage Dubai International Airport and the new airport project at Jebel Ali.
Dubai Airports Company (DAC) in April took over management of Dubai International from the Dubai Department of Civil Aviation (DCA). DAC general manager business development Rimzie Ismail says DAC will operate as a commercial business and is now trying to recruit a chief executive officer from the private sector “who will look at the airport from completely a commercial sense”.
She says the Dubai government decided last year to establish DAC in order to “commercialise” the management of Dubai’s airports. “They’ve aligned the business into the right boxes. We were really fragmented before,” Ismail says. “We realised with a new airport coming we needed to sit outside the government.”
McKenzie Consulting helped with the restructuring and has been on site at DCA’s headquarters, located within Terminal 1 at Dubai International, since October last year. Ismail says DAC has taken over all but 100 to 150 of DCA’s roughly 2,500 former employees. The 100 to 150 employees that have stayed with DCA work in air traffic control and regulatory functions. DAC also has created 100 new positions.
Neighbouring emirate Abu Dhabi had a similar restructuring last year with the new Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC) taking over management from the Abu Dhabi Department of Civil Aviation. ADAC began managing Abu Dhabi International and Al Ain airports last September and the transition was completed in April.
Shortly after it was established ADAC selected Singapore’s Changi International to help it manage its operation. Abu Dhabi Airport operations manger Ibrahim Mansoor says Changi, which has assigned seven executives to ADAC for the duration of the 18-month contract, is helping improve its service levels and systems. It is also providing some input for the design of a new mid-field terminal, which is slated to open in 2010.
Mansoor says Changi is now helping ADAC plan for the outsourcing of non-core activities, starting with ground handling and potentially to be followed by catering and facility management. ADAC has already started meeting with foreign companies interested in taking over ground handling at Abu Dhabi International.
Mansoor says ADAC also has started looking for foreign partners to help it develop the new mid-field terminal. “We are looking for strategic partners for development of the infrastructure and managing it,” he says. “It will be a competitive bid and definitely Changi will be one of the bidders.”
Mansoor says there are no plans to privatise the airport but if the mid-field terminal project is successful it could eventually lead to partial or even full privatisation.
Ismail, however, entirely rules out any possibility of privatisation at Dubai International or the new Dubai World Central airport at Jebel Ali. “The model is working very well now,” she says. “Why should we change it?”
Dubai Aerospace Enterprise Airports chief executive Kjeld Binger also does not expect any airport in the United Arab Emirates or elsewhere in the Middle East to privatise anytime soon: “Everything has a lead time. Governments don’t want to take two drastic steps at once - development and privatisation. Here I don’t see a strong movement towards privatisation. I see a strong movement towards development and partnership.”
Source: Airline Business
