Bursting seams, burgeoning traffic

Bursting seams, burgeoning traffic
Deccan Herald

The third busiest airport in the country, is in for a busier year. The year ahead is likely to spin Bangalore’s HAL Airport further into the passenger maze.

At six million passengers a year — well over its 3.6 million capacity — the airport is already grappling with saturation bottlenecks. And with the aviation industry estimates hinting at an annual traffic growth of close to 20 per cent (national figure), the airport is staring at some huge numbers for the year ahead.

The April 2008 opening of the upcoming Bangalore International Airport in Devanahalli, near here, is expected to ease the situation. HAL has already announced alternative plans for the airport, where it would test and certify its own aircraft for the Defence forces — activities that had taken a back seat ever since the airport was opened to commercial flights. HAL Chairman Ashok K Baweja has termed the impending closure of commercial flight operations at the airport as an “opportunity”, referring to HAL’s Joint Venture with Airbus Industrie for a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility at the airport. However, handling the traffic through the next 15 months, till BIAL opens the Devanahalli airport, will be the challenge ahead.

Last year, Airports Authority of India and HAL had on a Rs 50-crore budget initiated revamp of the airport infrastructure. The Air Traffic Control (ATC) system was modernised and the number of check-in counters increased under the project, apart from an extension to the international departure terminal.

However, with 10 domestic and around 13 international carriers in operation — and the airport’s peak-time average standing at around one landing or take-off every two minutes — the measures might prove short. Last year, the airport’s infrastructure woes were reflected in long queues at the baggage screening, stray dogs sharing space with waiting passengers, limited seating capacity at gate-holds, shortage of X-Ray screening equipment and the persisting problem of taxis and private vehicles hampering movement in and out of the airport.

What Virgin and Qantas did on western skies has inspired desi models like Air Deccan and GoAir. Big players in the industry continue to dismiss the “low-cost madness” but budget airlines and the rise in passenger traffic they have spun off, was pronounced in 2006. And the coming year, HAL Airport is likely to feel the heat from these rising numbers. Probably, further exposing its infrastructure pitfalls.