New terminal at Chennai Airport goes on full stream

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The new terminal at Chennai Airport today started operations in full stream with the departure and arrival on the same day. On Thursday early Morning Kalanithi Maran owned SpiceJet took off with two flights. Meanwhile, the national carrier Air India said that it will shift all its domestic operations to the new terminal from old terminal.

SpiceJet flights left the new terminal at Chennai to Pune and Kolkata at around 5 am on Thursday. The take-off of two SpiceJet aircrafts marked the start of regular departure of domestic flights from the new Chennai airport terminal, which was inaugurated by the Vice President of India in February this year.

SpiceJet and Jet Airways will shift their operations to the new facility on Wednesday followed by Indigo and Go Air on Thursday. AAI had begun shifting arrival operations to the new terminal from March 21.

Meanwhile, Air India, the National Carrier, said that it will shift all its domestic operations to the new Domestic Terminal Complex at Chennai Airport, with effect from April 12, 2013.

Air India will start flying from the new Domestic Terminal by operating its first flight AI-549 (Chennai-Port Blair) onwards from April 12, 2013.

However, the passengers travelling on the domestic sectors on the international flights will continue to depart/arrive at the Anna International Terminal, said in the release.

Air India has already shifted all its domestic arrivals to the New Terminal Complex effective April 11, 2013. The International flights of Air India will continue to operate from the Anna International Terminal.

It may be noted, earlier the Airport Authority of India has said that it is looking at the potential of the Chennai Airport becoming a hub for airline companies in South East Asia region. The new terminal was set with an investment of around 2015 crore as compared to the original estimations were of Rs 1808 crore. The authority is expecting the period for pay back to be in nearly 10 years.

The new domestic terminal would have a capacity of 10 million, while for international it is 4 million. The combined area of the new terminals is around 1,33,462 sq mts.

The handling capacity in domestic terminal would go up to 16 million and the international terminal to 7 million per annum, with the new terminals. This would help the authority to handle the increased passenger volume and cope with future growth and demand, said Agrawal.

He added that the current capacity utilisation is around 12.5 million passengers out of a capacity of 23 million and the utilisation is expected to reach 100 per cent by 2017-18. The airport has a potential to increase the capacity to 40 million, beyond which it would require a greenfield project, he added.