Poised for take-off

Up in the hills, surrounded by greenery all around and just 25 km away from the Arabian Sea, a greenfield international airport is getting ready to take off at Mattannur in Kerala’s Kannur district. If all goes well, the airport — being built by the Kannur International Airport Limited (KIAL) — will start its commercial operations in under a year.

“I hope to fly down at the Kannur airport when I go home for celebrating the next Onam,” says Suresh Narayanan, an NRI engineer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Narayanan, who hails from Thalassery in Kannur, is excited about the new airport. “When the airport becomes a reality, I plan to go home twice a year,” Narayanan says. “We, the Gulf NRI community from North Kerala, are all eagerly awaiting the commissioning of the Kannur airport.” There is a large online group of Kerala NRIs who pick up every single bit of positive news about the airport.

Trial run 

KIAL is planning to have the trial run of the runway by New Year’s. Work on the hilltop airport is going at a furious pace even as private enterprises are buying up plots close to the airport, hoping to set up hotels and other businesses. “We hope to have the trial run by end-December,” G Chandramouli, Managing Director of KIAL, says. “We have scheduled the commercial operations to begin in May-June next year, and we are moving ahead with this deadline in mind.” But, going by the current stage of the work, commissioning of the airport in May-June seems a tall order. Chandramouli agrees that there was a time loss of more than three months because of the monsoon rains.

    The project has gone through a lot of ups-and-downs and ifs-and-ever since it was first proposed 17 years ago. “Why an airport in Kannur?” and “A fourth international airport in tiny Kerala, after Thiruvnananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode?” were the immediate responses of the sceptics. “The answer to these questions is,” says Faizal Rahman, a social activist in Kannur, “the North Malabar region too deserves economic development and industrial infrastructure like the rest of Kerala.” Local people as well as environmental and political groups opposed the project, while lakhs of Gulf NRIs from the region supported the idea.

Kochi, inspires  

Initially, it was planned to be a private airport to be set up with the help of the State Government agency, Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation. Later on, the government decided to take the public-private-participation (PPP) route. The success of the Cochin International Airport Limited, the first airport in the country in the PPP mould, served as an inspiration for the Kannur airport.

It was after the Oommen Chandy Government took office in 2011 that the project really took off. The Chief Minister is the chairman of the KIAL board. Chandramouli points out that KIAL got excellent support in the form of quick decisions.

The Rs. 1,892-crore airport is part-funded by the State government, Central government agencies, banks, and private individuals, mainly NRIs. The State holds 35 per cent (in the form of land) of the Rs 1,000-crore equity part of the funding. Central public-sector organisations such as Airports Authority of India and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited have a 43 per cent share, while the remaining 22 per cent is held by private equity partners, mainly Gulf-based Keralites. The Rs. 892-crore debt is provided by a consortium of Canara Bank, South Indian Bank and Federal Bank. “Because of the State Government’s initiative, raising funds was relatively easy,” recalls Chandramouli, who took over as the MD in August 2013 after stints as airport director of Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. It was in November 2013 that Larsen and Toubro was given the engineering, procurement and construction contract (L&T’s TI-IC division is handling the Rs 694-crore ‘airside’ work; and the B&F division the Rs 498-crore ‘city side’ work.) 

Terrain, an issue  

The high elevation and hilly terrain of the 2,000 acres acquired for the airport have been a huge challenge for KIAL. The ‘cutting and filling’ site took a lot of time; huge quantities of earth were removed from one side to fill the other. Frequent blasting of rocks had annoyed local residents who tried to block work at the site a few times.

Because of the high elevation, a substantial part of the terminal building is below the ground level and the arrival and departure terminals are on different levels. The 3,050-metre runway is designed for landing for Code E aircraft (such as B77-300ER), though it can also occasionally be used for Code F aircraft (such as B 747-800) as the total linear length of the runway is nearly 3,600 metres. Chandramouli says that in the second phase of development of the airport, expected in 2020, the runway will be expanded to receive Code F aircraft regularly.

Even if the airport gets ready for commercial operations by the middle of next year, it is going to face a huge problem in terms of road connectivity. Given the slow pace of road development in Kerala, the hurdles in land acquisition and the high population density, the airport’s growth will be hit by the lack of proper road connectivity. The nearest city, Kannur, is nearly 25 km away, and building a four-lane road to the city and linking the airport road to the National Highway could take several years.

To complicate the problem, real estate sharks have bought up chunks of land along the present roads in view of sharp value appreciation.

With Gulf in mind The Kannur airport is being built with the Gulf NRI workers in mind. Over 90 per cent of the passengers are expected to be international, mostly from the Gulf countries. But too much dependence on the Gulf traffic is a huge risk in view of the fluctuating economic fortunes of the region where indigenisation of the labour market is increasing rapidly.

Chandramouli hopes domestic traffic will pick up gradually and points out that the airport is meant to cater for passengers from southern Karnataka districts too. Tourists visiting Kerala’s Wayanad and Bekal and Karnataka’s Mangaluru, Mysuru and Coorg would be a large segment of the domestic traffic. “In my view, Kerala needs an airport in each of its 14 districts because of the high demand for air traffic,” he asserts.

Will the Kannur airport be economically viable? “In the long term, it definitely will,” he said. “However, we have plans for commercially utilising the rest of the 2,000 acres for raising revenues from non-aviation operations.” These would include opening the land for businesses such as hospitality enterprises.

But for the estimated half-a-million Gulf NRI community from the North Kerala region, the question is: will the Kannur airport be ready to fly by Onam which will be celebrated in August, 2016? 

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