Chennai airport upgrade may lag passenger traffic growth

New Delhi: The Rs 1,808-crore modernisation and expansion plan for Chennai airport, which was recently cleared by the Public Investment Board (PIB) and expected to begin this September, may not be sufficient to cope with projected growth in passenger traffic.
Annual domestic and international capacity at the modernised airport, which will be done by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), is being raised from the current 9 million to 23 million by November 2010. But it is estimated that domestic capacity would be saturated in two years — that is, by 2012.
The modernisation plan includes constructing an additional domestic terminal, which will increase annual capacity from 6 million currently to 16 million, an addition of 10 million. But this capacity will be enough to handle the growth in passenger traffic till 2012, when it will hit around 16 million.
The international terminal will also increase annual handling capacity from 3 million currently to 7 million. This capacity, however, will be enough to handle passengers till 2017-18, when the number of passengers will hit 10 million.
A proposal for a new airport in Sriperumbudur is also unlikely to ease matters. For one, if the approvals come through next year at the earliest, the airport will only be ready by 2014. This will leave a two-year period when passenger traffic will exceed capacity in the domestic terminal.
13/08/08 Surajeet Das Gupta & Anirban Chowdhury/Business Standard

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Categories: Airports Aug 2008