The Indian Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval for the expansion and modernisation of integrated terminals at Chennai, Guwahati and Lucknow airports, at a cost of INR24.67bn ($370m), INR13.83bn ($207.45m) and INR12.32bn ($184.8m), respectively.
A new integrated terminal at the Lucknow Airport will have an area of 88,000m², along with the existing terminal building with 16,292m², reports World Construction Network. It will have an annual capacity to handle 2.6 million international and 11 million domestic passenger traffic.
The new terminal building will cater to the requirement of passenger growth up to 2030-31.
The proposed terminal building at the Chennai Airport will have a total built-up area of 336,000m², including the present proposal measuring 197,000m², with an annual capacity to handle 35 million passengers per annum (mppa).
The new terminal building will incorporate green building features with an aim to achieve GRIHA-4 Star rating.
The building will cater to the requirement of passenger growth up to 2026-27.
At Guwahati Airport, a new terminal building will have an area of 102,500m² to handle combined annual capacity (old and new terminals) of nine mppa. The building will cater to the requirement of passenger growth up to 2026-27.
According to IATA Traffic Study, India, which is at the seventh position, is likely to take the third position by 2023-24 by overtaking the UK, Japan, Spain and Germany.
To meet the growing demand, the Indian government has launched a new initiative, NABH Nirman (NextGen Airports for Bharat), under which systems and processes are geared to provide enhanced airport capacity to handle one billion trips in the next ten to 15 years.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is implementing plans for development of infrastructure to meet growing aviation demand by creating additional capacity at airports such as Chennai, Guwahati, Lucknow, Agartala, Patna, Srinagar, Pune, Trichy, Vijayawada, Port Blair, Jaipur, Mangalore, Dehradun, Jabalpur, Kolhapur, Goa, Rupsi, Leh, Calicut, Imphal, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar, with a capital expenditure of INR201.78bn ($3.03bn) in the next four to five years.
