City airport flying high

Sharp jump in domestic, international passengers in 2015-16 FY

A flight taking off from the Vizag International Airport in Visakhapatnam. Photo: K.R. Deepak

With a 135 per cent growth in domestic cargo in 2015-16 compared to the previous year, over 60 per cent growth in domestic passengers, and 38 per cent increase in aircraft movement Visakhapatnam International Airport is going great guns.

The passenger movement increased to 18.06 lakh during 2015-16 from 10.96 lakh during 2014-15. The number of international passengers increased to 1.21 lakh in 2015-16 from 55,634 during the previous year and the domestic passengers increased to 16.85 lakh from 10.40 lakh during the corresponding period.

Duty-free shop

The international cargo operations are likely to begin from the airport soon as tenders have once again been called for operation of the international cargo terminal and the last date for filing is fixed for September 13. A duty-free shop would be opened soon at the airport.

The existing apron has six (3 open bays and 3 aero bridges) parking stands to accommodate six aircraft at a time. The old apron has two parking stands, which are being used for non-scheduled aircraft and helicopter operations.

“The construction of six more parking bays is in progress and is expected to be completed by June 2017. The area of the terminal building would be increased by an additional 9,850 square metres and additional escalators and lifts would be provided to meet the needs of the growing number of passengers”, Airport Director Vinod Sharma said on Monday.

“The check-in counters would be increased from the present 20 to 30. A self check-in kiosk has been installed for the benefit of passengers and Air India, Jet Airways and IndiGo are already utilising the facility. The number of trolleys and the seating capacity at the airport lounge has been increased,” he said.

The connections to various destinations has improved further with flights being introduced to Agartala, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Srinagar and Kolkata introduced during the last six months and an additional flight introduced to Chennai.

Visakhapatnam MP Kambhampati Haribabu chaired the meeting of the Airport Advisory Committee held earlier during the day.

MLA P.G.V.R. Naidu, Joint Commissioner of Police A.S. Khan and Advisory Committee members attended.