Airports Authority of India Proposed new modern airport in New Delhi. image:41097:0::0

With the rapid boom in the tourism industry and as a result of new additions in airlines, apart from the low budget carriers, India has seen, what is said to be, a phenomenal increase in number of passengers reporting to the airports each day. Compared to a meagre 46 million people flying in India in 2003-04, more than 100 million are projected to be flying this year.

With the current airports even in large metropolitan cities lacking essential requirements and running with obsolete technologies when it comes to security check-ins and baggage handling, the government seems to have realised the urgent need to build new world-class terminals, and improve and refurbish existing ones to be able to handle the vast passenger load in the coming years.

According to the Airports Authority of India, the country needs to spend a projected $9.6 billion over the next five years in rapidly imroving the state of airports in the country.

The government has already sanctioned new airport terminals in major cities like New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Mumbai, Kolkata, where new airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad have already been opened to the public. A public-private ownership model was considered which has proved to be extremely successful owing to reviews and passenger experiences at the new airports.

At Hyderabad, on May 14, India’s first greenfield airport in public-private partnership was inaugurated at Shamshabad by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Built at a cost of Rs.25 billion, the airport is being billed as India’s first truly world-class airport, offering facilities on par with those at Oslo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore airports. The developers claim this project would take Indian airports to a new era. The airport, which has come up on 5,000 acres of land, has 4,260-metre-long runway, the longest in South East Asia. The airport has been built by GMR group, in partnership with Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL), which is also building the airport in New Delhi. Designed to handle 12 million passengers in the first phase, the airport is expected to make the city an international hub on par with Dubai and Singapore and a cargo hub of Southeast Asia. The ultimate capacity of the airport is 40 million passengers a year and one million tones of cargo annually

Similarly, on May 24th, the spanking new Banglore International Airport opened. The $ 630 million facility is at a distance of 36 kms from the new city.

Large infrastructure projects routinely run into major delays in India. However, the Bangalore airport was built in a record 36 months under a public-private partnership and is equipped to handle more than 12 million passengers a year till 2012.

Other major airport projects, like the one in New Delhi is set to open by 2010, a few months before the commonwealth games. Delhi at the moment is on a major drive to rapidly improve infrastructure, before the games, due in october 2010.