31.1.13

Chennai's new Airport Terminal inauguration


The Airports Authority of India is gearing up to make Chennai airport a hub for air travel in south India.
The two new terminals at the airport will be inaugurated by vice-president Hamid Ansari on Thursday, but it will take more than a month to make them ready for passengers.
The existing terminals will be re-modelled to increase the total passenger-handling capacity to 40 million passengers a year. Now, more than 12.4 million passengers a year use the airport. The new terminals and upgrading of air side infrastructure cost Rs.2,012 crore.
“We commissioned the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation to conduct a study and recommend suggestions to make Chennai a hub. It gave a few suggestions to augment passenger capacity of the airport to 40 million. We will get more space when old terminals are demolished and rebuilt to match the size of the new buildings and then there are plans to make better use of available land,” said Agrawal.
AAI would be redesigning its master plan to include these changes, he added.


“The new terminals will be thrown open to passengers in a month. They will be operationalised in a phased manner. There are some issues that need to be sorted out with airlines,” said Agrawal.
Airlines had earlier complained that there was no inline baggage scanning system and steep ramps made it impossible to handle baggage at the basement. A senior AAI official said “airlines should use better powered vehicles to transport baggage rather than use farm tractors.”

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