New Hyderabad Airport To Be Ready By '08

ET&T Staff - Mumbai

The new international airport coming up at Shamshabad, in the outskirts of Hyderabad, is expected to take off by March 2008, according to the Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL). It is being built at an estimated cost of Rs 1,663 crore on a 5,500-acre area. Kiran Grandhi, MD of HIAL, said, "While the entire project would be ready by December 2007, trials would be conducted for three months so that the airport would take off by March 2008." HIAL is a joint venture promoted by GMR Group (63 per cent), Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad (11 per cent), Government of Andhra Pradesh (13 per cent) and Airports Authority of India (13 per cent).

The contract, worth Rs 615 crore, is for fully operational terminal building area of over one lakh square metres. The airside and landside (ALS) works contracts, worth Rs 495 crore, was awarded to the Larsen and Toubro Ltd. According to Grandhi, HIAL has adopted a strategy for allowing incremental expansion of the facilities without major rebuilding of existing areas at the airport. This is aimed at maintaining the flexibility to meet future traffic levels.

The capacity is accordingly increased for the first phase to seven million passengers per year from the originally envisaged level of five million passengers. This international airport would be much bigger in capacity compared to the one coming up at Bangalore and would have runways to accommodate the A-380 aircraft.