The Covid-19 pandemic has crippled global aviation, and the Chennai airport was not spared either. Passenger traffic was down to one third from pre-Covid levels and consequently, aircraft movement, too, was significantly affected. Adding to the woes, the pandemic-related lockdown badly affected the airport’s ₹2,500 crore modernisation plans. In an interview with BusinessLine, Sharad Kumar, Chennai Airport Director, who took charge in July, said it is a very challenging time for the airport. Excerpts:

How badly has the pandemic affected Chennai airport’s operations?

Traffic was crippled due to lockdown to contain the pandemic. International traffic is now just 10 percent of pre-Covid levels. Domestic traffic had picked up since the second half of 2020 and is now at around 50 per cent of pre-Covid levels. We are in a recovery phase and hope to bounce back quickly. We are hoping that there is no third wave.

 

Can you give a comparison of the present situation versus pre-Covid days?

During pre-Covid, there were 53,000 passenger movements daily, but now, it is only 18,000. Consequently, aircraft movement dropped to 151 per day as against 450 pre-Covid. People still fear air travel despite our best efforts to woo them by creating a lot of awareness that air travel is safer. Professionals are working from home and stopped travelling and leisure travel has dropped significantly leading to poor traffic at the airport. Both the aviation and the hospitality industries have been hit very badly by the pandemic.

When can we expect the airport to achieve the pre-Covid traffic?

If normalcy returns fully, we can achieve it in three years to annually handle 22 million passengers.

How about cargo handling?

Handling of cargo was the only positive thing. Even during Covid times, only cargo aircraft were operating as medical equipment, Covid-drugs and other perishable cargo were carried without any interruptions.

Lockdown would have also affected your modernisation plans, right?

Yes, labour and raw material was unavailable. During pre-Covid, nearly 1,800 workers were working at airport modernisation. They left for home due to the lockdown. As the lockdown eased, workers returned gradually and now, there are around 1,000 people working. There is still some fear factor among the workers.

But why go in for modernisation at the airport?

Before the pandemic hit the country, Chennai airport was having a double-digit growth in both passenger and air cargo. However, the airport building was getting saturated. We had a design capacity to annually handle only 17 million passengers but were handling around 22 million. During peak hours, it was difficult to have enough space in the terminal. There were also bunching of flights. Chennai does not have enough land space. Every inch of space inside the airport is being utilised. We are constructing around 2 lakh square metres of terminal building area to increase capacity to 35 million from 17 million. In air side also, the expansion in areas like Rapid Exit Taxiway is happening.

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