Whenever an airport gets sanction to operate additional flights, it will usually evoke positive response from officials. This should particularly be the case for an airport such as the one in Coimbatore, which has been recording three years of negative business growth.
However, when a private airliner was recently accorded permission to operate three flights from Coimbatore International Airport, it set off fears over shortage of bays to park the aircraft.
Official sources told The Hindu here on Sunday that an airport with the volume of traffic such as Coimbatore required at least 20 bays. However, it now had only eight bays.
If VIPs and VVIPs with elevated threat perception fly down to Coimbatore and stayed for the night, the security personnel took over the two bays on either side of the one where the flight was parked.
Thus, three bays were rendered unusable, leaving only five others to accommodate the late night domestic and international flights.
An Airports Authority of India official said that problem over bays would be compounded next year after the new airliner commenced operation. The airliner was likely to operate three flights out of Coimbatore.
With a new integrated terminal that envisaged closing down the existing one already having been approved, the Union Civil Aviation Ministry and Directorate of Civil Aviation were reluctant to expand the existing facility in Coimbatore Airport, the official added.
However, this airport modernisation and expansion project is yet to take off as land acquisition, which must be done by the State Government, has been bogged down for months now.
While the acquisition of 634 acres was approved in 2010 for a massive expansion of the Airport, the final notification for land acquisition had been issued for less than a third of this land.
While Bangalore Airport was the stand-by airport for Chennai now, Coimbatore could be developed to attain this status.
Sources said that the infrastructure in Coimbatore must be elevated to be on a par with that of the Chennai Airport. This would not only develop Coimbatore but also cut down airliners’ fuel costs, which constitute a huge chunk of their operating costs.
When contacted, D. Paul Manickam, Director of Coimbatore International Airport, said that two additional bays and an equal number of aerobridges had been sanctioned at around Rs. 8 crore.