Chapter 1 - How it all began
It is a bright sunny day in the Northern part of Germany, right at the border to Denmark. John Doe, a young graduate from “Give me my certificate University”, just received an E-Mail in his inbox: ‘Do you want to become the CEO of one of the greatest ever airport projects in the world’. Curious as John is, he reads the E-Mail and is completely stunned. There is an international conglomerate of Saudi investors, a North Korean architectural agency, a Sudanese airport operator and the city of Flenshaus in Northern Germany that wants to establish an international MEGAHUB close to Flenshaus. The project is called I K A R U S - short for “Interkontinental Airport of Universal Scale”.
The city of Flenshaus strongly feels that they need their own airport as well. In the end there are airports already in Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock and some dozens of more places in Germany. Most of them are huge loss-makers, but who cares, in the end it is the tax payer’s money, so the mayor of Flenshaus also wants his own airport. And hey, the city is home to the largest collection of Smurfs in the world, this fact certainly will attract a few millions visitors per year. The conglomerate also made some fancy presentations and they expect a catchment area of at least 50 million passengers, well at least if you take a 500 mile radius. The airport should also have all the state-of-the-art facilities and should be profitable within two years after opening.
John Doe continues to read and the conglomerate tells him that they have found just the right place to build the airport. There is an old Airforce field close to the city that has not been used for the last 30 years. It is the perfect place to build the airport the conglomerate envisions. The E-Mail also asks a hypothetical question of ‘Why no one has ever thought about extending the existing field earlier’? Well well well, no one is as smart as the current mayor and his friends from Sudan. Only they possess the mental capacity to envision a great airport at this site, so great, I tell you, it is just great! Best ever airport in the whole wide world!
John knows the site, he went there with his dad when John was younger. It is one of those WWII airfields that have seen much better days. He loved the old aircraft stands in the woods. In the old days, there were MiG21 parked. John never knew who parked them there, but he did not care, they looked cool.
The existing airfield certainly has some nice features. A very loooooong runway and some small stands to the north of the runway, where the fighter jets used to be parked. Originally there were also some hangars built to park the jets, but they were demolished some years ago to build the city hall of Flenshaus. This “Northern Apron” area also has its own little vehicle depot and some small AVGAS fuel depots.
To the south of the runway is the old main tarmac, also called the “Southern Apron”. When the airfield was still operational, this tarmac was used by some C130 Hercules aircraft and every once in a while the US Army came here with their C5A Galaxy freighter aircraft. There are four stands on the tarmac together with some more vehicle depots, a tower building and some huge JetA1 fuel depots. The tower has not been used in a long time, but people who used to work there said, that the tower is as good as new and the technology from the 1950’s can still be used.
Wow… John thought to himself. This is really something. Everything you need for an Interkontinental Airport of Universal Scale is already there. You have a tower that is almost new with state-of-the-art cough technology, some important existing infrastructure, a long runway and some ready-to-be-used aircraft parking positions.
The Sudanese airport operator and the North Korean architecture agency have also already worked out a concept for an initial terminal. It should be built by North Korean freedom workers and be operated by highly trained staff from all around the world. Well English, and for that matter German, is not necessary a language anyone that is supposed to work at the airport speaks, but hey, those German pilots will easily learn some foreign languages to speak to the guys in the tower.
The terminal is planned to be very functional and designed according to the hottest trends in North Korean interior design. It should not cost more than 100.000 EUR, well at least based on the currency exchange rate of the EUR to the KPW (North Korean won) used by the North Koreans. The mayor of Flenshaus can easily afford this sum, hell even 200.000 EUR would be possible. So financing of the project is secured!And then there are still the Saudi investors. Who knows how much money they will give to fund the project. Maybe the airport can even be completely covered in gold with little diamonds in the check-in area to create a feeling of 1001 nights.
John is full of hope that he has the opportunity to start his career as a CEO of such a prestigious project. He replies to the conglomerate that he is thrilled to accept their offer and that he can start tomorrow. After John clicked on the “Send” button, he leans back into his chair and is happy. He thinks to himself “Wow, how lucky am I?”.
Poor John… little does he know what the hell he just agreed to. But that is part of the next chapter.
