There’s no doubt that Liebherr, the popular manufacturer of cranes used throughout the world, works on some of the coolest projects. Last year, the company shared a video of one of their cranes working 10,000 in the air on top of the Wetterstein Mountains, which also happens to be the highest point in Germany. They also created one of our favorite construction videos ever when they displayed one of their gigantic cranes lifting three other cranes at the same time. This time, Liebherr is showing off their swarm of 58 tower cranes gracing the skies of the new largest airport in the world in Istanbul.
The Instanbul Yeni Havalimani, as the new airport is called, began construction in May of 2015. When the final phase of construction is completed around 2028, it will claim the title as the world’s largest airport. Currently, based upon passenger capacity per year, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is the world’s largest, handling over 101 million passengers last year. Istanbul’s’ initial construction phase, which is estimated to be completed in early 2018, will allow 90 million passengers to fly per year, By 2028, officials estimate that the airport will be able to handle 150 million per year, with an expandable capacity of up to 200 million. The project specs are extremely impressive:
- 18,903.53 acre (7650 Hectares) site
- 818,057,191.67 square feet (76,000,000m²) project area
- 37,673,686.46 square feet (3,500,000m²) construction area
- 13,993,083.54 square feet (1,300,000m²) main terminal
- 35,314,666.7 cubic feet (1,000,000m³) of concrete in terminal building
- 198,416 tons (180,000 metric tons) of ferrous reinforcement in terminal building
- 30,000 employees during construction
Of the 58 cranes that Liebherr supplied, which is the single largest order in Liebherr’s history, there were three different varieties:
- (10) 154 EC-H 6 Litronic tower cranes with a 6.6 ton max capacity (6000kg)
- (32) 280 EC-H 12 Litronic tower cranes with a 13 ton max capacity (12,000kg)
- (17) 200 EC-H 10 Litronic tower cranes with an 11 ton capacity (10,000kg)
On Tuesday morning, February 23, the Syracuse Fire Department responded to a call about a collapsed crane on a construction site near the university. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.