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Civil Aviation Secretary K.N. Shrivastava has urged the Tamil Nadu Government to send a formal proposal to the Aviation Ministry for constructing a new airport at Sriperumbudur.
The State Government’s Vision 2023 document includes the Rs 20,000-crore investment in the greenfield airport, about 40 km west of Chennai, on about 4,800 acres. The feasibility report is with the State Government.
While the Ministry had given its ‘in principle’ approval and recommendations for the project, the State Government needs to seek a formal approval for the proposal from the Centre on this, Shrivastava said at the inauguration of the newly built international and domestic terminals and upgraded airside facilities at Chennai airport.
Vice-President, Hamid Ansari inaugurated the facilities in the presence of Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah.
By 2019-20, the present Chennai terminal will achieve its full capacity of nearly 40 million necessitating a new airport, said Srivastava.
He also urged the State Government to remove encroachments to make way for the secondary runway. This will increase the number of aircraft movements to 40 per hour from the present 30.
Speaking at the function, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said that in terms of traffic, Chennai airport was the third busiest in the country. Both the terminals and airside facilities have been upgraded and the secondary runway has been extended by 1,032 metres to have a total length of 3,117 metres by constructing a pre-stressed concrete bridge over Adyar.
During the last 10 years, the annual growth rate of passenger traffic was about 10 per cent. Estimates suggest that the domestic air traffic will touch 336 million passengers a year in the next 10 years and the international traffic will exceed 84 million from the current level of 121 million and 41 million respectively.
A key trend in the business model of the Indian carriers in the domestic operations is that domestic traffic is rapidly shifting to low cost carrier model. This trend is likely to continue in future, he said.
TN CM keeps off function
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa did not participate in the inaugural ceremony, though she was listed as one of the participants. She said she was not attending the function because her request to name the new facilities after former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran had not been acceded to.
Jayalalithaa received Ansari at the airport. While the Vice-President attended the inauguration function, the Chief Minister did not.
In a statement, she said that she had written to Ajit Singh earlier to name the airport after M.G. Ramachandran, and that this should be announced before inauguration. However, there was no response from him. By not naming the airport after Ramachandran, she said it hurts “me and people of the state”.
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