Chorus to keep HAL airport open

Chorus to keep HAL airport open
Sujit John | TNN

Bangalore: Major industry and citizens’ bodies of Bangalore came together on Tuesday to say that they would explore “all options” to keep the existing HAL airport open to commercial traffic even after the commissioning of the Bengaluru International Airport on March 30.
“It’s not just a few of us saying it. It’s the citizens’ cry,” Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, CMD of Biocon and one of the participants at the meet, said. The group, however, declined to specify the “options” being considered to keep HAL airport open. As things stand, the state government is committed to close the HAL airport once the new airport opens.
The group was particularly exercised by the issue of poor connectivity to the upcoming airport and the government’s apathetic attitude towards all suggestions made to improve connectivity. R K Misra, the Lead India finalist from Bangalore, said a just-concluded survey amongst over 4,000 citizens of Bangalore found that the vast majority support keeping the existing airport open at least till good access to the new airport is made available. “The travel time to the new airport from anywhere in the city should not be more than 1 hour,” he said. TOI had earlier conducted an exercise that found that it could take two to three hours from certain locations.
Other participants at the meet included N Reguraj, chairman, CII Karnataka, Ramesh Ramanathan of Janaagraha, Rama N S, vice president in Infosys, Devesh Agarwal, a representative of the Bangalore Chamber of Industry & Commerce (BCIC), M Lakshminarayan, joint MD of Bosch, A K Saxena, former MD of HAL, V Ravichander of Feedback Consulting and Sourav Biswas of CII. The group has come together under a platform called Bangalore City Connect, an effort to bring citizens’ passions, skills and concerns to bear in the most productive manner.
Some participants also noted that air traffic into and out of Bangalore had gone far beyond what Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) had initially estimated. “Even BIAL will not be able to handle the growth in traffic. Bangalore needs a second airport,” Agarwal said.