Chennai Airport plans totter on delays privatisation, metro project

Despite frequent accidents at the airport, management claims it stands at 46th position globally, in terms of passenger satisfaction

The administration of Chennai Airport has said that various issues concerning the development of the facility are pending due to prolonged delay in decision on privatisation for almost three years, and inadequate manpower, resulting in the delay of launching the new international arrival.

Deepak Shastri, Airport Director, Chennai Airport said that development is on hold since 2012 and that the development plan is incomplete on all fronts. This includes City side (Multi-level car parking) Terminal (Modification of old and new defunct terminals T2 & T3 (KDT & AIT)) and airside (under-utilisation of secondary runway for want of additional land from State Government).

"All these activities are pending due to prolonged delay in decision on privatisation (by almost three years)," Shastri said, adding that that the new international arrival is still not in use due to inadequate manpower provided by Immigration, Customs and CISF.

In August this year, the government had scrapped privatisation of four major airports - Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

In January, AAI had invited applications for four airports and the plan was to transfer their management, development and operations to private firms. The move was, however, criticised by the 2,000-odd staff working at these airports, as they were opposed to privatisation. AAI spent around Rs 2,400 crore on modernising the airport in Chennai.

"Our repeated requests for augmentation in manpower commensurate to growth of traffic are still pending with the concerned organisations," Shastri said, stating that delay in completion of metro work also contributed in city side development and potential of cargo was not exploited particularly in domestic cargo, perishable cargo, etc.

Shastri who was responding to the frequent accidents in the airport said that the Airports Council International (ACI), a worldwide body which is considered as the Voice of the Airports globally, acts as an interface between the Governments and world body like ICAO. In addition, they also conduct Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey on quarterly basis at 220 odd Airports all over the world, which is considered as an authenticated bench mark.

The survey considers 33 parameters to assess the satisfaction level of passengers on a five (05) point scale. In this survey for the last one year, Chennai Airport has been consistently scoring very good rating and it is more than the world average. At present, Chennai Airport stands at 46th position, globally, he claimed.

His reaction to came to frequent accidents, including collapse of roofs, glass windows etc., which were highlighted by cross section of Media.