Built economically yet without any compromise on aesthetics or quality, Hyderabad’s new Interim International Departure Terminal is a lesson in the development of airports in our country, writes Srinath Rangarajan
It does not take much time to recognise that today’s airports are fast becoming hotspots for congestion. The long queues at check-in counters, clogging of boarding gates and associated risks and delays clearly reiterate this. Many of the major airports in India are already operating beyond their capacity and a few more are expected to breach their capacity this year. To refresh our memory, it was only around a decade ago that the new, state-of-the-art airports were built in Bengaluru and Hyderabad with Delhi. A few more are set to join the club. These airports were designed with operational capacities considering the passenger-traffic growth for at least the next two decades. But the unprecedented growth in the Indian aviation industry at nearly 20 per cent every year is crippling our Airport Infrastructure. Added to this, we have the UDAN Scheme of the Government of India to boost regional connectivity which is in turn contributing further to the increased demand.
While India’s airport infrastructure needs to take a giant leap, it also needs to be understood that any expansion will take a time of three-four years before the facility gets operational for passengers. With the current geometric progression of the year-on-year growth, any meaningful enhancement of capacity should also address the interim passenger growth that will be taking place in these three to four years in a phased manner.
The recently inaugurated Interim International Departure Terminal (IIDT) building at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad has not got a lot of attention. It is not a giant infrastructure project built with thousands of crores spent over the years. The press coverage on it has also been meagre. Needless to say, it is not something that has sought much limelight. However, there are a lot of things which need to be appreciated in this facility. This terminal building has been carved out of a meticulous planning exercise involving and analysing the present traffic growth at RGIA, projected traffic growth, rapid capacity assessments of airside and land-side facilities among others. While analysing these at micro levels, it was observed that passenger traffic is stressed the most at the pre-boarding stage. Thus developed this idea of an exclusive concourse to handle check-in, security, immigration and customs process for international passengers. After completing these formalities, passengers will move into the main passenger terminal building though a connecting corridor from where they will proceed to boarding. The terminal will also have a premium check-in facility from where passengers travelling in business class can avail personalised and assisted check-in process. The terminal also boasts of India’s first ever remote, hand baggage screening facility which can increase passenger throughput and reduce the consumption of time at security check.
The terminal thus frees the main passenger terminal building from international departures, potentially making it completely open for domestic departures. The terminal building is at par with any of the airport terminals in India. The construction techniques employed at every level are designed in such a way that enables this facility to be modified, dismantled or reused for a different purpose in the future. And to make all these aspects significant is the fact that this terminal has been constructed in fast-track mode — it took just six months.
Today, we are living in an India where the demand for infrastructure is burgeoning and the citizens are becoming increasingly aspirational. The demand for enhancing infrastructure is also progressing exponentially and this is something which has its own gestation period to come up. More often than not, the whole situation becomes messy on various accounts while the infrastructure is actually being built. In fact, the issue of catering to the rising interim demand for infrastructure while the actual infrastructure is being built to ensure unhindered growth is a ubiquitous phenomenon across all sectors of the economy and it is in this context that we need to understand the importance of innovative ideas like the proposal to come up with an IIDT Building in RGIA which can act as a temporary shock absorber before the big expansion works take shape.
As mentioned by the Civil Aviation Secretary RN Choubey in his speech at the inauguration function, we need more people like GMR Hyderabad International Airport CEO SGK Kishore and GMR Group Business Chairman GBS Raju. Their idea of conducting an exhaustive and meticulous infrastructure planning exercise well in advance and using those results analytically in coming up with innovative ideas is something which needs to be replicated across the board. These are the practices which have the potential of keeping India’s economy flying high at all times, without any hindrance.
The writer is a Senior Engineer working for the Hyderabad Airport Expansion Project through Vijay Nirman Company
