Site for Chennai's second airport at Sriperumbudur approved

19 September 2007

The union government has approved a 4,000-acre site for Chennai's second airport at Sriperumbudur, an hour's drive from the city centre.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party, which rules Tamil Nadu and is a key ally in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre, had proposed the site.

Chennai's Anna International Airport, which handled 8.7 million passengers in 2006-07, is likely to reach its capacity of nine million this year. The government has already approved a plan to upgrade the present Chennai airport at Meenambakkam, at an estimated cost of between Rs1,700 crore and Rs2,000 crore ($420 million to $495 million).

Bids for modernising the airport, run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), are likely to be invited by January, and awarded on a turnkey basis rather than splitting the contract between multiple engineering firms. The civil aviation ministry has been operating on the assumption that upgrading the existing airport could accommodate Chennai's growing air traffic.

Chennai's Anna International Airport is spread over 1,152 acres. It is India's third largest in terms of air traffic, which is growing at 17.3 per cent annually. Since there isn't enough land to expand operations, the government now believes Chennai will need a second airport. The airport, which handled 8.7 million passengers in 2006-07, is likely to reach its saturation capacity of nine million this year.

Civil aviation secretary Ashok Chawla said the ministry had asked the state government to freeze the land, so that whenever the process for building a second airport starts, the illegal encroachments that have hampered expansion at airports elsewhere in the country are not allowed to come up.