Centre clears blueprint for City international airport

Centre clears blueprint for City international airport
Deccan Herald

Interestingly, the airport will be redesigned in such a way as to cater to 11.4 m passengers although the projected traffic demand for Bangalore — as per a recent study done by Lufthansa - puts the figure at 6.7 m by 2008 and 8.5 m by 2010.

The Centre has given its stamp of approval for the new blueprint of the Bangalore international airport, fast coming up at Devanahalli near the Garden City.

The redesign of the airport was necessitated because of the booming traffic that the cyber city has seen of late. Thus, instead of the planned 4.5 million passengers by 2008, the airport will now handle 11.4 million when the first phase is thrown open in two years’ time – by April, 2008 (the HAL airport currently handles nearly five million passengers per annum).

“All issues with the Civil Aviation Ministry have been sorted out. We are going ahead as per the original Concession Agreement (CA)”, Karnataka’s Principal Secretary (Infrastructure Development) Vinay Kumar told Deccan Herald after his meetings with ministry officials here. As per the newly approved design, the airport will have more apron area, longer taxiways, increased number of aircraft stands and a larger terminal. There will, however, be no second runway, which will come up during the next phase. The new design will see 36 aircraft stands from the earlier planned 20 while apron area will be enhanced from 1.8 lakh square metre to 2.6 lakh sq m. The terminal building area will increase from the original 55,850 m to 71,000 m providing for additional conveyor belts for luggage movements and more check-in counters than planned. The airport will now be built to handle several hundred more passengers than the originally planned 2,017 passengers per hour.

The air traffic control will be equipped to handle 27 aircraft per hour instead of the earlier planned 20. The terminal will be planned in such a way that minimum time was taken for passenger boarding.

The authorities say one runway will be enough to handle the 11.4 m passengers. The runway will have a length of 4000 m, 45 m width and 7.5 m shoulder on either side. “Instead of the second runway, we are looking at optimizing its utilisation. The stress is on optimization of all facilities than expansion”, Mr Kumar added.

Also, the redesign will not require more land than the allotted 3,800 acre. “The land that we have is sufficient to expand the facilities to handle the ultimate capacity of the airport of 40 m passengers”, the principal secretary added, noting that the scheduled opening of the first phase remains unchanged.

Interestingly, the airport will be redesigned in such a way as to cater to 11.4 m passengers although the projected traffic demand for Bangalore – as per a recent study done by Lufthansa - puts the figure at 6.7 m by 2008 and 8.5 m by 2010. On the financial side, the redesign will cost the Bangalore International Airport Limited at least Rs 525 crore more than the initial project cost of Rs 1,400 crore. “We have arranged for an additional loan of Rs 450 crore from ICICI Bank while the rest 75 crore will be raised by BIAL from its internal resources. There will be no additional equity or state support”, he added.

“Legally, there will be no need for a new CA although it will go through some consequential amendments. There are no substantial issues pending now after the decision to redesign the airport”, Mr Kumar remarked.

The airport redesign stemmed from a direction from Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel who wanted the airport to look “futuristic” and cater to the projected traffic demand. Following this, the BIAL Board approved the redesign in principle at its meeting on April 7.

The project has five shareholders including consortium leader Siemens Group (holding 40 per cent share), Zurich Airport Authority and Larsen and Toubro (17 each) and Karnataka Government and Airports Authority of India ( 13 each).