New-look Chennai airport may be ready by March

Chennai: The Rs 2,015-crore expansion project was supposed to be completed by now but there has been a further delay due to various limitations, said Mr E.P. Hareendranathan, Airport Director.
“But we expect the facility to be ready for trial runs by December. The airport will be functional by March next year.”
One of the issues was regarding the acquisition of Defence land for setting up a utility building, an a/c plant and substation. That has been ironed out and the land has been obtained, said Mr Hareendranathan.
The project involves extension of secondary runway (which is currently 2.07 km long) by 1.03 km.
There will be 14 additional parking bays. The international terminal building is also being expanded by 59,300 sq m.
Currently, the Chennai airport's capacity is 320-330 aircraft movements a day.
Passenger traffic for FY2011 was 12.05 million, while cargo traffic was three lakh tonnes (international) and 93,000 mt (domestic).
“We are unable to entertain more peak capacity requests but with the expansion, the movements will go up significantly,” said Mr Hareendranathan.
14/07/11 Swetha Kannan/TE Raja Simhan/Business Line

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Airports Jul 2011