NEW DELHI: Plans for a new airport at Sriperumbudur near Chennai seemed to have taken wings after officials of Airports Authority of India (AAI) met with Chief Secretary Debendranath Sarangi with a proposal for the airport last week. AAI sources confirmed that the executive director (Architect) of AAI met Sarangi to give him a presentation on what the airport would look like. The proposal also suggested that the new airport should be privatised. Five sites in the area were identified for the project with TIDCO’s recommendations. While AAI had made a proposal for two parallel runways at the site, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)-appointed Louis Berger Group Inc submitted a techno-feasibility study on dual airport operations in which it recommended that one runway would be enough to meet the demands, given the constraints of land procurement for the greenfield airport. ICAO report also recommended the airport be built on a public-private partnership basis. “With the current modernisation, the capacity for handling 23 million people will be achieved by 2018-19. Beyond that, a new airport becomes mandatory. Spadework on the greenfield airport is likely to start in 2016,” an AAI source said. On the economic feasibility of building the new airport, ICAO recommended that AAI could be responsible for phase I of construction but later the operations and expansion should be handed over to a private party. The anticipated expenditure for phase-I of the project is `4,000 crore with a 87,000 sq mt terminal along with a parking space for 750 vehicles. “In the second phase we are looking at 1.5 lakh sq mt of terminal and enhancing parking space to accommodate 1,500 vehicles. This will require an investment of `1,475 crore,” an AAI official said.
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