19-Apr-2008
Second intenational airport likely 9 years before schedule
Target Date 2015 As Present
Airport's Expansion Stalls
CHENNAI: The city is likely to get a spanking new airport by 2015, nine years before the earlier D-day. The greenfield project will be taken up on 4,822 acres of land near Sriperumbudur, northwest of Chennai, at an estimated cost of Rs 3,500 crore. The dates have been advanced in light of certain trouble — largely relating to land acquisition — that cropped up in the Rs 2,350-crore modernisation and expansion project of Kamaraj International Airport at Meenambakkam.
Unlike Bangalore and Hyderabad, Chennai's old airport will not be shut down when the new one comes up. Rather, the city will have two airports like those planned in Delhi and Mumbai. The search for a private consortium to build the airport will start soon. It will be offered a 74% stake, while the state and central governments will hold 13% each.
Officials told The Times of India that the state government had expressed difficulty in acquiring the 1,069 acres of land required west of the Adyar river for building a parallel runway as part of phase-II of the Meenambakkam expansion plan. It is proving tough to get more than 300 acres of the land identified as the costs are prohibitively high. It's also difficult to clear the entire area of habitation, a state government official said.
At current prices, the government estimates it will cost Rs 2,000 crore to acquire the land. Besides, the Madras High Court recently ruled that the government could acquire land, but it's learnt that chief minister M Karunanidhi is not keen on displacing too many households in the area as he anticipates an adverse political fallout.
In the wake of these developments, the civil aviation ministry, in consultation with the state government, decided to speed up the greenfield airport at Sriperumbudur. Land for the new airport can be acquired easily as it belongs to the government.
Joint secretary, ministry of civil aviation, K N Shrivastava said air traffic was likely to grow faster in Chennai than earlier projected and would justify the decision on a new airport. The ministry will set up a committee to decide how flights will be distributed between the two airports. It is too early to be specific on which flights (international, domestic and low-cost airlines) will operate from where, an official said.
New airport is a high priority: Secy
Chennai: Tamil Nadu transport secretary Debendranath Sarangi has confirmed that the state government was pressing the Centre to take up the Sriperumbudur airport project on a priority basis because the Meenambakkam airport would not be able to handle the growing traffic demands beyond 2015.
Sarangi said a feasibility study was being undertaken by the Airports Authority of India. The Meenambakkam airport and the proposed airport at Sriperumbudur are separated by 25 km as the crow flies and will not come in each other's path, he said.
Chennai handles 10 million passengers a year, and the passenger traffic is projected to grow to 22 million over the next 10 to 12 years when the planned construction of a parallel runway and a second terminal at Meenambakkam phase-II is completed, an AAI official said.
But if the government decides not to acquire land adjacent to the airport, a new airport becomes an absolute necessity.
Work on lengthening the secondary runway at Meenambakkam, from 6,900 to 10,000 feet, is on as part of the phase-I expansion. Once that is done, it will ease pressure on Meenambakkam and with some deft management can keep the traffic going until 2015.
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