International airport in Panvel may get saturated in 25 years: ORF Report

Mumbai: The proposed international airport at Panvel near Navi Mumbai has a planned capacity to handle 10 million passengers a year in the first phase of the project, which may get saturated in 25 years.
When that happens, there would be no space left around Mumbai to build a third airport, warned the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a public policy think-tank, in a recent report. According to the report, setting up an inadequately planned second airport at any site around Mumbai would be a disaster for the metropolis and would very adversely affect India’s economic growth.
“India expects to spend a mere $2 billion for a new airport for the commercial capital Mumbai, which might be grossly inadequate. Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi had cost about that much, while Beijing’s terminal 3, the largest in the world, had cost $3.826 billion. Thailand, too, had spent $3.8 billion on setting up Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, an unusually low price for a complete airport, set up on boggy land,” says the report titled ‘Mumbai’s Second Airport: Too little, too late?’. Among other alternatives, Mandwa-Rewas faces severe environmental and rehabilitation hurdles though it is a much better site with an area of 45 sq km and can ultimately handle 100 million passengers.
28/08/10 Business Standard

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Categories: airports aug 2010