One more airport – this time Kozhikode -- along the west coast of India witnessed an air crash a decade after the one that took place in Mangaluru.

The Air India Express flight from Dubai IX-812 overshot the runway on landing and fell over a cliff and caught fire on May 22, 2010. Of the 166 people in the flight, only eight survived. The dead included 152 passengers and six crew members.

But the accident did not deter the aspirations of the people of Mangaluru and the airport continued to witness growth in infrastructure development and in traffic handling also.

VV Rao, Director of Mangaluru International Airport, told BusinessLine that the airport has carried out several works on terminal side and on the operational side.

Infrastructure

Work on the construction of second phase of parallel taxiway is going on in full swing, he said.

The phase-1 commissioning of the parallel taxi track has increased the runway handling capacity from 10 flights per hour to 14 flights per hour. The capacity will be increased to 17 flights per hour after the completion of the phase-2.

He said that AAI has also taken up the work on the expansion of terminal building along with a facelift to the existing terminal building. The expansion will help the airport handle an additional 1 million passengers a year.

Isaac Vas, President of Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), told BusinessLine that many passenger friendly services are introduced in the terminal building to enhance passenger delight and safety. Expansion of the terminal building has been taken to meet the ever-growing demand with many additional passenger facilities such as aerobridges, conveyor belts, escalators, elevators, and travellators etc.

The existing terminal building has an area of 19,500 sq metres. The AAI will add another 11,343 sq metres at the international arrival area.

Vas said the airport has also taken up expansion of apron at the airport. Aircraft parking bays have been increased from 10 to 15 now.

Traffic

Rao said that the airport has seen tremendous growth in passenger handling also in the past 10 years. The total number of passengers handled at the airport increased from 8.45 lakh in 2010-11 to 18.76 lakh 2019-20.

While launching the works related to the expansion of terminal building last year, Nalin Kumar Kateel, Member of Parliament from Dakshina Kannada, had stated that the new facility will help increase the annual passenger handling capacity of the airport from the existing 2 to 3 million passengers.

The number of aircraft movements from the airport increased from 9,431 in 2010-11 to 15,685 in 2019-20.

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