New Chennai airport terminal to be ready in a year
TNN | Sep 14, 2019, 05.39 AM IST CHENNAI:
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is working to complete by September 2020, a new integrated terminal in the space between the domestic and international terminals at Chennai airport. It will be used partly for domestic and international passengers.
A senior AAI official said around 21% of the work was over. “It is moving at a pace good enough to meet the next September deadline. The terminal work is being done in two phases. The first is to complete the building. We will then move the international arrival to the new building and pull down the old one for rebuilding.”
The project is expected to be completed by 2022, he added. AAI chairman Anuj Agarwal held a review meeting on Thursday to assess progress.
Work on the integrated building began in July 2018 at the old Kamaraj domestic terminal. The new building is being designed to help handle domestic and international flights simultaneously. International arrivals are currently operated from the old building which will have to be pulled down and a new building constructed and linked to the integrated building. This will boost the terminal capacity to 30million passengers a year. AAI wants to speed up the work as the airport is expected to get saturated by 2022 and the state government is yet to identify land for the second airport.
Once ready, the new building will handle international arrivals and the existing building would be pulled down. The new international arrival terminal is to be ready by 2022 under a Rs 2,000crore project that is part of the airport’s phase-2 expansion. A domestic terminal and international terminal were commissioned in 2013 in the first phase. “The challenge is to carry out construction when there are two terminals on either side of the plot where passengers are handled. This means we can’t build it like a greenfield airport where work is done on open land. We have to ensure flight operations and passenger movement on the city side are not affected,” said an official. The authorities had to reallocate parking bays for flights away from the terminals. There are not enough aerobridges either as most of them were connected to the already-razed Kamaraj terminal.
In a year, most of the hassles faced by airlines and passengers will be removed, said officials. While the integrated terminal will have aerobridges and a modern check-in and boarding system, parking bays will be closer to reduce boarding time. Feedback is being obtained at all stages to ensure the building is user-friendly. As no feedback from airlines was taken before 2013, when the existing international terminal was being built, the facilities did not match user requirement. AAI has still not been able to open the arrival portion on the ground floor of the existing steel and glass building.
TNN | Sep 14, 2019, 05.39 AM IST CHENNAI:
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is working to complete by September 2020, a new integrated terminal in the space between the domestic and international terminals at Chennai airport. It will be used partly for domestic and international passengers.
A senior AAI official said around 21% of the work was over. “It is moving at a pace good enough to meet the next September deadline. The terminal work is being done in two phases. The first is to complete the building. We will then move the international arrival to the new building and pull down the old one for rebuilding.”
The project is expected to be completed by 2022, he added. AAI chairman Anuj Agarwal held a review meeting on Thursday to assess progress.
Work on the integrated building began in July 2018 at the old Kamaraj domestic terminal. The new building is being designed to help handle domestic and international flights simultaneously. International arrivals are currently operated from the old building which will have to be pulled down and a new building constructed and linked to the integrated building. This will boost the terminal capacity to 30million passengers a year. AAI wants to speed up the work as the airport is expected to get saturated by 2022 and the state government is yet to identify land for the second airport.
Once ready, the new building will handle international arrivals and the existing building would be pulled down. The new international arrival terminal is to be ready by 2022 under a Rs 2,000crore project that is part of the airport’s phase-2 expansion. A domestic terminal and international terminal were commissioned in 2013 in the first phase. “The challenge is to carry out construction when there are two terminals on either side of the plot where passengers are handled. This means we can’t build it like a greenfield airport where work is done on open land. We have to ensure flight operations and passenger movement on the city side are not affected,” said an official. The authorities had to reallocate parking bays for flights away from the terminals. There are not enough aerobridges either as most of them were connected to the already-razed Kamaraj terminal.
In a year, most of the hassles faced by airlines and passengers will be removed, said officials. While the integrated terminal will have aerobridges and a modern check-in and boarding system, parking bays will be closer to reduce boarding time. Feedback is being obtained at all stages to ensure the building is user-friendly. As no feedback from airlines was taken before 2013, when the existing international terminal was being built, the facilities did not match user requirement. AAI has still not been able to open the arrival portion on the ground floor of the existing steel and glass building.
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