2024 Travel News ArchiveTravel

Terminal B inaugurated at Punta Cana International Airport

On the occasion of celebrating the 40th anniversary of its international flight, the Punta Cana International Airport officially opened Terminal B to accommodate the increasing numbers of travelers arriving and deporting to the eastern airport.

Punta Cana International Airport visionary, Frank Rainieri Marranzini was present to receive President Luis Abinader and Tourism Minister David Collado and give the official tour of the new facilities.

Terminal B has been in operation since last year. The terminal has an area of 35,000 m2 with seven boarding gates and seven air bridges. It was conceived to handle 5,000 passengers per hour and 4 million per year.

The Punta Cana International Airport served 8 million passengers in 2023, evidencing the growth of the Dominican tourism industry. Most travelers are tourists headed for the Punta Cana beach resorts. But given the connectivity of the airport, increasingly more travelers are using the airport hub services.

Terminal B offers flagship amenities and services such as a VIP Lounge with a pool and an impressive view of the runway, Fast Track service and a modern food truck area with a wide gastronomical variety.

Punta Cana International Airport has direct flights to 75 cities in 34 countries and serves more than 58 airlines. In March 2024, there were more than one million arrivals at the airport.

Grupo Punta Cana announced RD$5.4 billion was invested in the second terminal. Together Terminal A and B have the capacity to handle up to 5,000 passengers per hour. Traffic in the first quarter of the year (January to March 2024) was up 18%.

Grupo Puntacana CEO, Frank Elias Rainieri Kuret highlights the airport now has capacity to exceed 11 million passengers a year. In 2023, the airport serviced 8 million travelers.

Speaking at the inauguration, Rainieri Kuret highlighted that the technology installed at the airport terminal is at the highest international quality standards. “Today (…) the Punta Cana Airpot is a model of sustainable development as we assume new investments, keeping us at the forefront and ahead of the growth curve of the tourism sector.”

The airport has self-check-in flight kiosks, migration with e-gates, 10 state-of-the-art body scanners, 8 tomographic machines and 4 automated machines, being one of the most modern in equipment in all of Latin America.

Among the leading-edge airport technology in place are smart path-biometrics for check-in procedures without agent assistance, self-service kiosks and mobile technology with biometric registration. This enables quick and safe registration. Other high-tech services include self-service baggage clearance with biometric verification, simple electronic doors or double self-service boarding, access control to secure areas and automated border control.

In addition, being implemented are self-check-in kiosks with luggage tag printing, an Explosive Detection System (EDS) at the security check-point and luggage carousel, new security screens, auto-gates, self-service boarding, kiosks ABC in the arrival migration area and the self-service bag drop.

The Punta Cana International Airport has two runways, 27 boarding gates, 30 aircraft parking spaces and three VIP lounges. Likewise, it has its own Recycling and Incineration Center, where 60% percent of the waste it generates is recycled.

Punta Cana International Airport opened with domestic traffic in 1983 and receives its first international flight, a Prinair flight with tourists from Puerto Rico on 11 April 1984. The airport today boasts the greatest connectivity of airports in the Caribbean.

When the airport was authorized for international traffic in 1983, it became the first private aerodome authorized for international commercial traffic in the world. Today, PUJ is the most trafficked airport in the Dominican Republic, and the airport with the greatest connectivity in the Caribbean.

Read more in Spanish:
Punta Cana International Airport
Institute of Civil Aviation
Diario Libre

16 April 2024