The undulating terrain of the vast extent of land near here where work is going on at a hectic pace for construction of the Kannur international airport is changing rapidly with large earthmoving equipment at work levelling the area and hundreds of labourers and technical staff working day and night to complete the project by the scheduled completion date of May next year.
Officials of Kannur International Airport Ltd. (KIAL) and Larsen and Toubro, which has been awarded the Rs.694-crore engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) contract for developing the runway and the Rs.498-crore passenger terminal building (PTB), were optimistic that the trial landing at the new airport will be in December-January as planned and that the commercial operation can begin in May next year.
Nearly 50 per cent of the earth work, including cutting and filling, involving 190 lakh cubic metres of earth has been completed and the work for constructing the airport apron is nearing completion.
“If the monsoon is proper and if there is no stoppage of works due to contingency situation, the project will be completed as per schedule,” KIAL Managing Director G. Chandramouli told The Hindu . The work is now progressing at a rapid pace to catch up with the loss of nearly 85 days when the blasting work had to be stopped at the site due to local protests, he said.
Apart from apron, the work under the EPC include runway, parallel taxi way, fire station, approach roads, operational boundary walls, and property boundary walls.
Runway work
According to project engineers, the levelling work for the runway and the construction of the basic structure of the PTB are expected to be completed before the onset of monsoon.
Due to the local protests against blasting, L&T has brought special machinery for cutting the laterite in three localities in the project site, they said.
Foundation and piling work for constructing the PTB and air traffic control (ATC) tower have been completed by now. The PTB will have a total of 8,00,000 sq ft area, while the ATC tower will have 30m height.
Land acquisition
KIAL officials said that the procedure for acquiring 11.44 acre land urgently required for runway construction is in the final phase.
Of the total 785 acre land identified for the third phase acquisition, 612 acres has been taken over by the Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Kinfra).
A total of 1,278 acres has already been acquired in the first and second phases.
Tender work for developing supporting infrastructure such as water supply and electricity supply facilities has been completed, they added.
