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An official study by the Airports Authority of India assesses the annual passenger capacity of HAL Airport at 8 million passengers. 6.5 million domestic terminal and 1.5 million international terminal.

This is contrary to popular belief of 3.5 million passengers.

According to Mr. B.R. Sena, General Manager, AAI, Bangalore, the figure of 3.5 million is based on extremely old assessments. AAI has added the international terminal building, and increased the size of the existing domestic departure terminal since then.

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7 comments

kbsyed said... @ June 28, 2008 at 6:33 AM

Devesh,

Is this a admission on AAI's part that until now they had put HAL at 3.5 million PAX capacity?

But all along the industry experts were saying the quite opposite that it has reached 10 million in 2007 itself?

That means AAI is culprit in not evaluating the exact HAL capacity? I am sure this has many ramifications in BIAL also?

Devesh Agarwal said... @ June 28, 2008 at 10:44 AM

The 3.5 million capacity figure was promoted by BIAL during the various discussions and latched on to by the media.

3.5 million was a very early capacity, which was expanded in 2 phases to 8 million.

To call AAI the culprit in this case is completely unfair.

Anonymous said... @ June 28, 2008 at 12:12 PM

Where is the source of this report? I did not see any official report on this.

Looks like a propoganda from some vested intrest group

Anonymous said... @ June 28, 2008 at 12:14 PM

Where is the source for this report.Is this an official data?

Looks like a propaganda from few vested intrest group

Devesh Agarwal said... @ June 28, 2008 at 12:56 PM

It is an official report from AAI. A copy of the report was sent to the Chamber and is with me.

kbsyed said... @ June 29, 2008 at 6:23 AM

If the BIAL was promoting 3.5 M PAX capacity what was AAI doing in all those discussions? Didn't AAI had the guts to refute those numbers? Devesh, you might have soft corner for all the babus for your/chmabers benefits, but the fact is AAI has failed the public as PUBLIC representative in BIAL. Agree or not, for BIAL saga I hold AAI more responsible than any other entity. Everybody has atleast done their part. Good or bad.

Also what is the use of such updated evaluations now? If they were so concerned they should have published such numbers 3 years before when the work started in BIAL. I think there is more to this than just these capacity numbers.Is something cooking up behind the public's gaze? I am sure there is. Why would they sent chambers a special bulletin and public didn't have any clue on that. May be that is transparent policy of AAI?

Devesh Agarwal said... @ June 29, 2008 at 11:11 AM

I agree with you, that both HAL and AAI have failed in their duty to "serve" the public. Placing authentic information or correcting a wrong inference is also part of public service, and ultimately it is the public that is the owner of both these PSU's.

But I temper my criticism. During the PIL, BIAL counsel made all kinds of allegations against HAL and the AAI terminal. Neither AAI or HAL responded. I cannot say with certainty, but I suspect "instructions" were received. We cannot blame bureaucrats for wanting to protect their positions.

The 8 million capacity would have been achieved in the last expansion which was completed in early 2007.

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