Bangalore, Hyderabad airport cities are ready to take wing

Bangalore/Hyderabad: GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) plans to develop an aerotropolis on 1,000 acres, which will promote education, healthcare, entertainment, hospitality, commercial and logistics ports around the airport.
Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) will take up expansion of Terminal-1 at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore to raise capacity to 17 million passengers a year in the next 18 months, says Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa. Expansion of T2, which is planned from 2014, will eventually take capacity up to 25 million. The current capacity is 10.6 million.
The Karnataka government earlier announced that work on the expansion of the existing Terminal 1 would begin in September. When complete, Terminal 1 will be expanded by 70 per cent of the existing building, with an additional passenger space of 40,000 square metres. This will take the terminal capacity to 17 million passengers a year, sufficient until 2015.
The total annual traffic as on March 2010 stood at 9.92 million passengers, marking annual international traffic growth at 18 per cent, and domestic traffic growth at 13 per cent. It achieved an overall growth of 14 per cent over 2008-2009.
In Hyderabad, as part of its development of an airport city, GHIAL has finalised an agreement with the Apollo Group to set up a hospital, mainly to cater to foreigners. Apollo Group Chairman Pratap C Reddy recently confirmed the move. There will also be overseas partners in the project.
GHIAL is also working with international players to form joint venture partnerships to create business assets on the proposed 1,000 acres. There are plans to develop an aviation special economic zone spread over 250 acres and a multi-product SEZ on another 250 acres, said a GHIAL official requesting anonymity.
The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), which began operations in March 2008, saw a 5 per cent growth in overall passenger traffic in 2009-10. In two years, the airport has handled 6.4 million passengers. Cargo handling in 2009-10 touched 65,727 tonnes, 14.8 per cent more than last year. It has the capacity to handle 12 million passengers a year and in the final phase will handle 40 million passengers and 1 million tonnes of cargo.
03/09/10 Raghuvir Badrinath/Praveen Bose and B Krishna Mohan/Business Standard

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Categories: airports Sep 2010, New Sep 2010