Ten New Airports Needed for India, Report States
A study undertaken by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation concludes that India needs 10 additional airports by 2020. The nine cities in which new airports are planned are Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Nagpur and Pune. Not on this list is Mumbai, which already has two principal hubs, but here, says the report, a third is still required.
The report places a figure on the scheme of approximately $30 billion. This is separate to the $9 billion which KN Shrivastava, the Civil Aviation Joint Secretary, recently said was set to be spent within India’s airport sector over the next few years.
In both Delhi and Mumbai, 20 million passengers are handled each year; a statistic that, with continued growth, will lead to saturation within three years. By this point, claims the report, Delhi and Mumbai airports would be accommodating passenger traffic of up to 30 million and 40 million, respectively. The situation is even more pronounced in Hyderabad and Bangalore, where saturation is predicted for next year, on the basis of traffic there reaching the 10 million mark. It is then that a pair of greenfield airports in both cities are set to open.
In Kolkata, a second airport needs to operational by 2010, even though the existing airport is set to, itself, go through a programme of modernisation, ordered by the Airport Authority of India.
Within the Indian aviation industry at large, a chasm exists between the notions of additional airports, and revisions of the existing ones. One commentator, Air Deccan’s chairman, G Gopinath, described the government’s notion to shut down the current airports as impractical. He stated: “Nowhere in the world have we seen airports being closed down. Why should Delhi have one airport or why should the existing Bangalore Airport be closed after the new one comes up? Competing airports help segregate traffic. In Hyderabad and Bangalore, the government monopoly has been replaced with a private monopoly.”
“What we need is competition between airports so that the carriers get the best service and price.”
His comments are echoed by the chief of Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya, who adds: “Technically, closing down an airport seems unfeasible when we are talking of such a huge growth in traffic.”
Among some experts within the industry, the prevailing sentiment is that several cities are in need of replacement airports. On this train of thought, an official from Pune Airport states: “Pune Airport handles around 1.5 million passengers per year. With all the development work going on, we will need another airport in 2012, when the passenger traffic reaches 3 million, but there should be an alternative airport to handle all the traffic. We do not need two airports for Pune.”
Source - Airport International's Asian Correspondent
