Financial bids for the Rize-Artvin Airport, Turkey's second airport and the world's third to be constructed on reclaimed land will be submitted on Jan. 12. Financial bids for the airport, which is to be built on the Yeşilköy and Pazar coastline located 34 kilometers from Rize's city center, 105 kilometers from Trabzon and about 75 kilometers from the border of Artvin, will be submitted on Thursday, Jan. 12. Five of the 11 firms which previously made pre-qualification applications have been invited to the bidding.

The construction will start right after site delivery, which will be made within 15 days of signing the contract with the winning company. The airport will be completed within 1,800 days from the date of delivery. The airport to be constructed on an international conventional scale will have a 3,045-meter-long runway along with 265-meter-long and 24-meter-wide connection roads, also known as taxiways, and a 300-meter-long and 120-meter-wide apron.

For the airport, which was modeled using Boeing 737-800 type aircraft as reference, a runway running on an east-west axis parallel to the sea will be constructed along with connection roads on an area of 4,500 meters.

Construction work will require 88.5 million tons of backfilling materials, including 25 million tons of stones. An average 17-meter-deep reclaimed island will be constructed, reaching down 22 meters at its greatest depth. The Rize-Artvin Airport is expected to serve 2 million passengers a year once completed and become Turkey's 56th airport.