Sriperumbudur airport may not take off:
CHENNAI: The much-expected second airport at Sriperumbudur may not take off as both the Centre and the state government are preparing to shelve the project. Even as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has undertaken a techno-economic feasibility study of the project, a senior official in the Union civil aviation ministry said that the government is convinced that there is no urgent need for a second airport in the city, as the existing airport at Meenambakkam is being expanded.
The Airport Authority of India (AAI) is spending Rs 3,800 crore on the expansion works including construction of a new terminal and laying of a secondary runway, which are expected to be completed by April 2011. Confirming the development, sources in the state government pointed out that many major cities across the world were operating with one airport and the present air traffic in the city could not justify a second airport. As per the condition for setting up the second airport, the state government has to acquire about 5,000 acres of land and hand it over to the AAI free of cost.
"It may entail expenditure between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000 crore which the state government may not be ready to shell out," the sources added. The officials also argued that if private operators had to be brought in, the existing airport should be closed down as in the case of Bangalore and Hyderabad. Having spent more than Rs 3,000 crore on the expansion works of the present airport, it would not be a prudent move to close it down, they said.
The existing Chennai airport handles about 350 aircraft movements a day, which will go up to 450 a day once the expansion works are completed. "This should be sufficient to handle the growing demands for up to 2015," said a AAI official. Moreover, it would not be possible to keep two airports operational, given the traffic projections; and the additional expenditure on a mass rapid rail link between the two airports could not be justified, the officials added.
The proximity of the two airports has also gone against the proposed airport at Sriperumbudur. While internationally accepted norms say that there should be a minimum distance of 150 nautical miles between two airports, the two in Chennai are hardly 20 nautical miles apart.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Sriperumbudur-airport-may-not-take-off/articleshow/5622087.cms
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Many news papers have several times reported that the cross runway or parallel runway+cross runway are adding only one runway to the existing runway at Meenambakkam airport and that the two runways can take care of growth in air traffic till 2015. As such the run way work will be over sometime end of this year or next year. AAI is unable to get the portion of defense dept land it wanted for lights and buildings. Clearly the cross runway will not be useful so also the parallel runway will not be useful if defence land is inside! They are also not enough after 2015.The whole project is a useless and waste of taxpayers money.AAI must press for Greenfield airport if it really wants to serve Tamilnadu people and the Govt of Tamilnadu.
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