Preparing an Airport for the Olympic Games: Athens Amedeo Odoni 1 ; Miltos Stamatopoulos 2 ; Eva Kassens 3 ; and Jan Metsovitis 4 Abstract: Athens International Airport served as the principal gateway to Greece for athletes and the Olympic Family and for the general public during the Olympic Games of 2004. The airport’s performance during the Games was universally praised. This paper describes many facets of the extensive preparations for the event and of actual operations during the event. These include: principal strategic decisions, coordination with the major stakeholders, air traffic and passenger forecasts, new facilities and upgrading or modifications to existing ones, air traffic slot management, planning for and modeling of the flows of members of the Olympic Family through the airport, and some initiatives with respect to organizational structure, security, and contingency planning. The paper also outlines some more general “lessons” for airports that will handle events of similar magnitude and visibility in the future. DOI: 10.1061/ASCE1076-0342200915:150 CE Database subject headings: Airports and airfields; Greece; Planning. Introduction On Sept. 5, 1997, the International Olympics Committee IOC selected Athens, Greece as the host city for the Olympic Games of 2004. The announcement touched off a wave of enthusiasm in Greece and marked the starting point of 7 years of preparations for this major event, which finally took place from Aug. 13 to Aug. 29, 2004. At the end of the Games, the consensus opinion of the general public and of mass media throughout the world was that this was one of the most successful Olympics ever in terms of organization, public excitement and spirit, and quality of the ven- ues and of the competition Frantzeskakis and Frantzeskakis 2006. One of the principal selling points of the Athens bid in 1997 was that a new Athens International Airport AIA, already under construction at the time, was scheduled for completion in 2001 and would serve as the principal gateway to the Athens region and Greece during the Olympics. The airport did indeed open in March 2001, as scheduled, and did perform admirably during the Games. The objective of this paper is to summarize the main steps that were taken between 2001 and 2004 to get the airport ready for the Olympics, as well as to describe several aspects of the airport’s operations during the critical period. The overall strategy that was followed, as well as most of the specifics described herein, are, we believe, applicable to airports that will support future Olympic Games and, more generally, major international events of a similar nature. A few weeks after the end of the 2004 Olympics, Athens hosted the Paralympic Games, as well, with similar success. The Paralympic Games, although much smaller as an event than the Olympics, posed many difficult logistics issues for AIA—an in- teresting story in itself. However, this paper will concentrate solely on the Olympic Games. The structure and contents of the paper are as follows: in the following section, some background information is provided on: the principal stakeholders at AIA, the critical task of coordinating the stakeholders’ efforts before and during the Olympic Games, and some policy guidelines that influenced the way the airport prepared for and operated during the Olympics. The following four sections then cover some specific aspects of the planning and operating stages of AIA’s involvement with the Games. Specifi- cally, the section “Forecast of Traffic” describes the very practical approach that was taken toward producing an airport traffic fore- cast for the Olympics and compares the forecast with actual traf- fic figures. The section “Capacity Analysis and Result in Actions and Measures” first explains the rationale for some of the invest- ments in facility, equipment, and personnel that were made for the Games in response to the findings of a demand/capacity analysis and then describes the procedures that were put in place for the awarding of flight slots. The section “Modeling the Processing of the Olympic Family” contains an overview of three simple, fast, and flexible simulation models that provided important support in managing the flows of members of the “Olympic Family” ath- letic delegations, Games sponsors, media representatives through the airport. The section “Other Actions and Measures” presents summary descriptions of three of the other important initiatives taken at AIA during the Olympics regarding organizational struc- ture, security, and planning for contingencies. Finally, the section “Conclusions” summarizes the main conclusions and “lessons learned” that can be drawn from AIA’s experience in 2004. Background, Stakeholders, and General Guidelines The process of preparing AIA for an event of such magnitude as the Olympic Games made it necessary for Athens International 1 T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. 2 Supervisor, Airport Capacity Management, Athens International Airport, S.A., Spata, Greece. 3 Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. 4 Director, Aviation Unit, Athens International Airport, S.A., Spata, Greece. Note. Discussion open until August 1, 2009. Separate discussions must be submitted for individual papers. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review and possible publication on March 10, 2006; approved on November 16, 2006. This paper is part of the Journal of Infrastructure Systems, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 1, 2009. ©ASCE, ISSN 1076-0342/2009/1-50–59/$25.00. 50 / JOURNAL OF INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS © ASCE / MARCH 2009 Downloaded 02 Feb 2010 to 35.8.11.3. Redistribution subject to ASCE license or copyright; see http://pubs.asce.org/copyright