India's newest airport terminal set for take-off
India's newest airport terminal is almost ready, completed in record time and in time for the Commonwealth Games.With a capacity to handle 34 million passengers a year, it is said to be the world's third-largest terminal building, after Dubai International's Terminal 3 and Beijing Capital's Terminal 3.Delhi International Airport Limited's Terminal 3, built at a cost of US$2.6 billion, will be rolled out in the middle of next month after an official inauguration by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 3. India's most ambitious infrastructure project to date, the new extension to the Indira Gandhi International Airport has a 4.4km runway, a million trees planted inside and outside the terminal, and aluminium cladding covering 80,000 sq m. Set to place India firmly on the world aviation map, the new facility underscores the country's rapid push to develop its infrastructure. New Delhi is now South Asia's biggest aviation hub, having surpassed Mumbai last year as India's civil aviation sector continues to boom.
India's air passenger traffic has grown at 22 per cent from that a year ago, and the new terminal is expected to run out of space in less than five years.
While builders are struggling to complete several other facilities in time for the Commonwealth Games in October, the new terminal was finished in good time.
That the project was completed in less than 40 months is testimony to the growing emphasis the country places on acquiring world-class facilities and valuing time as a critical economic factor. Hyderabad and Bangalore in southern India already have new world-class airports.
Increasingly, the Indian government has been roping the private sector into building and running infrastructure, as it looks to spend more than US$1 trillion on roads, ports, airports and bridges over the next decade.
When planning began for the showcase project, India was keen to rope in Singapore expertise. For this reason, a consortium led by India's Bharti Group that included Changi Airports International and the New Delhi-based DLF, the country's top real estate company, was widely considered the front runner.However, Changi Airports International - the overseas investment arm of Singapore's main airport operator - pulled out of the consortium in September 2005, shortly after the Indian government circulated documents for restructuring and modernising the airports in Mumbai and New Delhi.
Changi was said to have withdrawn because it thought the deadlines and targets, such as on the speed of baggage handling, were unreasonable and could not be attained. Its decision was later widely considered to be a strategic blunder.
The terminal was ultimately built by a consortium headed by Hyderabad-based GMR Group that included Fraport of Germany and Malaysian Airports.
Even so, it is not clear if all the parameters prescribed have been met, partly because the efficiency of the airport will be tested only when full operations begin towards the end of next month.
A key official involved in the project spoke of some of the difficulties encountered, such as the need to have to build the unusually long runway - one of Asia's longest. "We didn't need a 4.4km runway," said a senior airside engineer. "But there was a 60-foot-tall Shiva statue across the road from one end of the runway, and we could not get permission to move it.
"So we simply had to build a longer runway, and aircraft now fly over more than a kilometre of runway before touchdown because of the statue hazard."
At the peak of its construction, 37,000 workmen - including experts from Singapore, China and the United States - were on the sprawling site in south-west New Delhi where more than 1,000 trucks lumbered in every night, carrying stone, cement and wood.
GMR flew in about 300 priests last month to conduct five days of prayers as it gave the finishing touches to the massive ramp that will lead up to the terminal, whose domestic and international departure piers are each 1.2km long. The airport has 78 aerobridges.With the late premier Indira Gandhi's concern for the environment still fresh in their minds, the authorities built an airport with huge green spaces - with about 922,000 trees and shrubs being planted.
The internal landscaping alone will have 266 varieties of plants, while the airport complex will include a full-fledged plant nursery, said people involved in the planning.
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