22.1.13

A look at Kolkata's new Airport Terminal









Kolkata airport has now overtaken Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore in terms of passenger handling capacity. The new state-of-the-art integrated passenger terminal at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) Airport in Kolkata can now handle an annual traffic of 20 million passengers. The old terminal has the capacity of handling 7.46 million passengers per annum. Together, they can handle nearly 28 million passengers annually.
Delhi has a passenger handling capacity of 46 million, Mumbai has a capacity of 40 million, Chennai has a capacity of 23 million, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports have passenger-handling capacities of 12 million each. The passenger handling capacity of Delhi airport will gradually be taken up to 100 million by 2030, Bangalore’s capacity is being increased to 20 million by 2015. Capacity expansions at Mumbai and Hyderabad airports are also underway.
The new airport terminal in Kolkata thrown open on January 20, can now handle almost three times more passengers per hour than the older one. The area per peak hour passenger has also been doubled, reflecting
more comforts for the passengers, a top official of ITD Cementation India Limited, which in joint venture with its parent company ItalianThai Development Public, Thailand (ITD), executed the airport modernisation project, said.
The integrated passenger terminal departure facilities include 48 international and 80 domestic check-in counters, 38 immigration counters, 23 international and 33 domestic security gates with frisking booths. The arrival area has 40 immigration counters, 26 conveyor belts, 6 customs counters and 18 aerobridges, ITD Cement officials said.
The new airport terminal with a covered area of 2.33 lakh sq metre, can now handle an Airbus 380, while earlier it could handle aircrafts not larger than a Boeing 747.
An additional 11 parking bays have been added to the existing 12, thereby increasing the total number of parking bays to 23. “The integrated passenger terminal can handle 7,452 passengers per hour as compared to 2,850 passengers earlier. Further, for the comfort of travellers, the area per peak hour passenger is now 29 sq m as compared to the 15.34 sq m earlier in the international terminal and 22 sq m as compared to the earlier 14.38 sq m in the domestic terminal,” said Karnasuta.

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