Cart stand better than airport’

Cart stand better than airport’

Express FeaturesFirst Published : 17 Feb 2010 04:23:51 AM ISTLast Updated : 17 Feb 2010 07:26:16 AM IST
BANGALORE: The jatka (cart) stands of the city are better than the Bangalore International Airport, according to a judge of a division bench of the Karnataka High Court, which added that the airport looked like a matchbox.
BIAL came into the limelight on Tuesday, when a division bench of the court — comprising Justices VG Sabhahith and SN Sathyanarayana — blasted the service conditions of the airport and criticized the shabby construction, while hearing a petition filed by the employees union of the Airports Authority of India.
The court has adjourned the hearing to Wednesday.
Counsel for BIAL, former advocate general Udaya Holla, denied the allegations of the petitioners, saying that they were baseless and false.
The counsel for the petitioners, however, claimed that the BIAL is not up to standards as prescribed by the International Air Transport Association and pointed to the study report of the Airports Authority of India.
Earlier, AAI had said that a study conducted by BIAL seems to have been done by people who are not experts in the field of airport capacity assessment.
The assumptions made by BIAL are not feasible and are impracticable, the AAI had said. The BIAL has conveniently misstated the concept of the capacity assessment. The static capacity is only used to arrive at the dynamic capacity and is never used to decide the saturation of an airport, the AAI had countered. The assessment of peak-hour capacity by BIAL and the tables are also incorrect, it had said.
The BIAL has assessed the peak-hour capacity for international departure as 896 and international arrival as 1,188, AAI pointed out, stating that this is not correct and no airport can afford to have such kind of imbalance between departure and arrival capacity.
AAI also said that BIAL’s statement that it has followed International Air Transport Association (IATA) recommendations is factually incorrect. The IATA manual has given an area of 1,50,000 sq m for a terminal of 10 million capacity as against BIAL’s 71,000 sq m, the AAI has pointed out.
The Airports Authority also disagreed with the report of BIAL on per hour passenger (PHP) requirement.
According to the BIAL, the concession agreement does not specify a requirement of area of PHP, AAI said but pointed out that the concession agreement clearly specifies the requirement of 27.3 sq m are per PHP.