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The Confederation of Indian Industry, Tamil Nadu State Council, supports the Tamil Nadu government's decision to proceed with the
Chennai Airport expansion and modernisation plan.
CII felt that the passenger traffic for Chennai Airport is expected to increase 20-30 per cent and reach 12-13 million by 2011 and the cargo traffic is expected to increase more than 20-25 per cent in the next four years.
Chennai Airport at present handles over 10 million passengers and over 16 lakh tonnes of cargo per annum.
The airport at present has the following facilities:
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Runway length of 3,658 mts and width of 45 mts
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Staff (including airlines) over 10,000.
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1,200 acres of area.
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62,000 number of flights handled in a year.
These are, however, inadequate given the projection on traffic and cargo. Both passenger and cargo handling of Chennai Airport has been going up rapidly in the last few years.
Gopal Srinivasan, chairman, CII Tamil Nadu State Council, said, "CII fully supports the expansion and the modernisation of Chennai Airport. We welcome the request given by the Tamil Nadu
government to the Centre to make available 835 acres of land on both sides of the Adyar river."
On a long-term perspective, the concept of having a separate city airport and a separate international airport has been found viable in many Asian countries like Taipei and Tokyo as is the case in
Mumbai.
It would be ideal if the airport project can be reviewed after a decade, keeping in mind the geographical development and look at the feasibility of having separate airports.
CII has suggested the following:
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Expansion/modernisation of the current airport. The existing single runway would saturate over the next 2-3 years. Hence, there is need to explore the possibility of a second runway with 4 km of length (this would also be able to handle the next generation Airbus 380 aircrafts).
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New Greenfield project - this project should have a horizon of 100 years.
R Rangaraj
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