Casablanca Airport Plans Terminal Expansion as Passenger Numbers Soar

It is urgent to rebuild this Terminal 3, to increase the capacity to 23 million travelers, in order to avoid saturation as early as 2023, confides a source at the National Airports Office (ONDA) to the Médias24 website. Indeed, the "Mohammed V" Airport is experiencing its heyday, with huge growth rates, particularly in summer (26% in June). Already in 2018, there was an additional one million tourist arrivals. If urgent measures are not taken, the reception capacity will be limited in the coming years, with the consequence of disrupting the fluidity of passenger traffic.

Before launching any construction site (expansion, renovation, ...), ONDA, specifies the interlocutor of the Médias24 site, takes into account the recommendations of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC), which are nothing other than the result of forecasting studies based on the evolution of the tourism dynamic, the opening of air links, ...

But the hitch, points out the same source, the DGAC master plan, which plans to demolish and rebuild Terminal 3, intended for pilgrimage and special operations, recommends doing so only by 2025.

According to the ONDA agent, this new terminal will make it possible to bring the total annual capacity of the Airport to 23 million passengers, i.e. 9 million more than the current capacity of 14 million.

For efficiency in action, he suggests not repeating the experience of T1, whose construction duration has led to the saturation of airport capacity.