Bangalore's IT Industry Faces a New Hurdle With Airport Move

Bangalore, India's outsourcing hub, has been grappling with poor roads, traffic jams, and power cuts. From Friday, the city's outsourcing and other industries in the city have to cope with a new problem -- a new, and distant, airport.
Staff working in the city's outsourcing industry, who travel extensively within the country and abroad, will have to travel about 40 kilometers more on average to the city's new airport, called Bengaluru International Airport (BIA). As a result of the additional distance, air travellers may have to spend two to four hours on the city's congested roads to get to and from the airport, according to various estimates.
The city's older airport is scheduled to stop receiving commercial air traffic on Friday. This move is in line with an agreement between the government and the investors in the new airport, which has been set up in a remote suburb of the city called Devanahalli.
The city's business leaders and some other citizens are demanding that both airports be allowed to operate, with the older airport on the outskirts of the city at least handling short-distance traffic to and from Bangalore. The Bangalore City Connect Foundation (BCCF), an organization set up by Bangalore's citizens, is demanding that government renegotiate its contract with BIA to allow for the continued operation of the old airport for some traffic.
20/05/08 John Ribeiro, IDG News Service/PC World

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Categories: Airports May 2008, New May 2008