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Footballer Baichung Bhutia was visibly surprised to see the spruced-up terminal of the Kolkata airport. “It’s a dramatic change,” he said.
Baichung was amongst the few lucky fliers who had been on the IndiGo flight that landed at the new terminal of the Kolkata airport from Mumbai this afternoon.
Trial Run
The trial run of the integrated terminal of the modernised Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport (also called Kolkata airport) was successfully carried out on Sunday afternoon.
Operations for domestic airlines are likely to begin from October this year. “The first trial run has been successful. We will conduct the second trial run in a fortnight and then do one by one,” Mr B. P. Sharma, director of the Kolkata airport, said. He added that customs and immigration set-ups were expected to become operational over the next couple months.
Modern facilities
Once fully functional, the terminal can handle nearly 54,000 passengers a day and two crore passengers a year.
Spread over 20 lakh square feet, the modernised facility will have 104 check-in counters, 25 security kiosks, 18 aerobridges, 53 remote stands for aircraft, hi-tech luggage handling system and other amenities.
Passengers were happy with the facilities and arrangements made at the terminal building of the airport.
According to a frequent flier, Mr Debatra Ghosh, the new terminal was ‘fantastic’ and ‘matched up to the levels of Delhi airport (T3)’.
Mr Pushkar Mukherjee was awe-struck when he landed at the new Kolkata airport this afternoon. A frequent flier from Mumbai, he found the new terminal in stark contrast to the old one.
“It took me just five minutes to reach the terminal gate from the flight. It was unbelievable. Earlier, it used to take at least 20 minutes,” Mr Mukherjee said.
The luggage handling and security systems were quite fast , Mr Mukherjee added.
Officials overseeing the luggage handling trials maintained that it took just about two minutes to handle 2,000 trolleys from the bay to terminal.
Maintenance contracts
According to the State Transport Secretary, Mr B. P. Gopalika, who was present at the airport, maintenance of such a well-equipped airport terminal should be given priority. Sources at the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said that the authorities are likely to hand over the maintenance of the new terminal to a private player.
“AAI in the process of floating a tender for system maintenance and housekeeping of the new terminal,” an official added.
ayan.pramanik@thehindu.co.in
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