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If Mother Nature doesn’t interrupt, the first trial landing at the Kannur airport will take place in December next year,” says Kannur International Airport Limited (KIAL) Managing Director G Chandramouli. “And, the airport will be opened to international passengers in May 2016.”
Unlike other airport projects, the work in Kannur is now on track and keeping to schedule. The ₹1,800-crore airport, being built at Mattannur, 25 km from the city in North Kerala, picked up momentum towards the end of 2012.
Promoted by the Kerala Government, it was conceived some 15 years ago. After a lot of dithering, it received ‘in-principle’ consent from the Civil Aviation Ministry in February 2008. KIAL was set up in 2009 and by the end of the following year, around two-thirds of the roughly 2,000 acres required for the project was acquired. AECOM Asia Company Limited was appointed the integrated project consultant.
The airfield work was awarded to L&T in November last year, and early this month, the company began work on the integrated passenger terminal. Chandramouli says there have been few delays after the work started. The airport is expected to receive 4.6 million passengers a year and will serve Kerala’s Kannur and Kozhikode districts and Karnataka’s Mysore-Coorg region. It will have a 3,040-mt single runway in the first phase.
Taking the PPP routeThe PPP project had initially aimed to secure 49 per cent private equity participation. This was reduced to 16 per cent. The Kerala Government now has a 35 per cent stake, BPCL, 21 per cent, and the Airports Authority of India, 26 per cent.
There have been misgivings about the need for a fourth international airport in Kerala. But the airport’s proponents point out that around one tenth of the population of Kannur district works abroad, mostly in the Arabian Gulf region, and the airport will be a huge advantage for them.
If the project continues to be executed at this steady pace, NRIs from North Kerala should be able to take off from this airport in a couple of years.
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