Bangalore’s IT firms lobby for two airports

Some 10 months from now, Bangalore will get a new airport at Devanahalli, 35 km from the city, but the city’s information technology industry wants the state to continue using the current airport for short-haul flights.
“It does not make sense for a person to drive two hours to reach an airport and then take a one-hour flight,” said T.V. Mohandas Pai, director for human resources at Infosys Technologies Ltd, one of the city’s flagship software companies. Civilian air traffic from the existing airport in the city, owned by the public sector defence aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), will cease once the new airport being built by Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) becomes operational according to a concession agreement between the company and the central government.
Spokespersons for the ministry of civil aviation and BIAL said there was no proposal to change or change in the concession agreement between them and that the HAL airport would have to be closed to civilian air traffic once the new airport came up. A change, if any, would happen only after discussions with BIAL and approval from the Union cabinet, said the spokesperson at the ministry. Pai and Infosyschief executive designateS. Gopalakrishnan were part of a delegation led by the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the industry lobby, which met Karnataka chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, to discuss infrastructure issues in Bangalore.
The IT industry employs over 6.75 lakh people in Bangalore, nearly a tenth of the city’s population, and fears the commuting time to the new airport would take longer than the flight duration to destinations such as Chennai.
06/06/07 K. Raghu/Livemint

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Categories: Airports Jun 2007, New Jun 2007