Taking to skies, with new flight plan

CHENNAI: The long standing dream of Chennai having a second airport seems to be turning into a reality as earlier this month, the State government finalised Parandur, near Sriperumbudur, which is about 70 km from here, as the site for the greenfield facility.

Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation VK Singh had announced this last week in the Rajya Sabha, while remarking that the government had earlier considered four sites – Cheyyur and Mamandur in Chengalpattu, Parandur in Kancheepuram, and Pannur in Tiruvallur district.

After taking into account, the viability and feasibility, with regard to the presence of habitation and industrial establishments, as well as the cost of land acquisition, the State short-listed Parandur as the location for developing the new airport. A time frame of seven years has been set for the construction of the airport.

The zeroing in on Parandur to construct a new airport is a welcome decision in more ways than one, considering the operational challenges being faced by the existing Meenambakkam airport.

As per estimates, the current airport, which operates close to 400 flights every day, and sees a footfall of 35,000 to 40,000 passengers per day, will hit the saturation level by 2024. In the pre-pandemic years, the airport was capable of handling 30-35 landings and take-offs on an hourly basis.

That demand is now set to surge to 50-60 landings per hour. To top it off, industry veterans are confident that the addition of new terminals by itself is not a solution that will bring in more flights to Meenambakkam.

An expansion of the airport is out of the question considering it is located in the vicinity of defence establishments, not to mention, the floodplains as well.

The new airport project will cost upwards of Rs 20,000 cr, and it is being planned with two bigger parallel runways that will allow flights to take off simultaneously, as well as handle larger aircraft with a seating capacity exceeding 600 passengers.

It is estimated that the new airport should essentially take the passenger footfall to 20 mn annually.

And although the 4,000 acre proposed site adjoining the NH48 to Bengaluru is an open agricultural parcel, land acquisition might not be a cakewalk as it was seen recently in the aftermath of the announcement of the new project.

Villagers in Parandur have lamented that as many as five villages could be completely razed down to build the new airport, as per the map released by the government.

The compensation for the land alone might not suffice as the people living here predominantly work in the agricultural sector, and do not have any other means to earn a livelihood.

There are also some real practical considerations one must account for when thinking in terms of making an airport passenger friendly.

The average distance travelled by a passenger to each Parandur airport will be 73 km, and the time taken would be two hours as compared to 21 km and 54 minutes that it takes to get to the Chennai airport.

Tamil Nadu can take a lead from cities like Hyderabad and Bengaluru’s greenfield airports, which are now easily accessible thanks to the multi-modal transport infrastructure, including shuttle services.

The post-pandemic era has opened up opportunities of a diverse kind for air travel, both on the leisure and business front.

And if Chennai is keen on joining the leagues of world-class airports, we need to opt for a robust PPP model, employ private players with a proven track record, work on the Build-Operate Transfer system, to ensure we have a world class airport before the end of the decade.