Praja members,
Another RTI response to share with. A Praja member had filed an RTI application with Ministry of Civil Aviation for obtaining a copy of the Capacity assessment of Bangalore's new International airport(BIAL). The capacity assessment was done by AAI from June 16-18, 2008.
Here is the summary of the AAI's report on BIAL's capacity after its opening in May 2008. Prajagale, please feel free to go thru the summary as well as detailed report and draw your own inferences. We have one request that, you do post your feedback and evlauation of this report.
Full report
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Exec-Summary_Page_1.GIF | 187.43 KB |
| Exec-Summary_Page_2.GIF | 163.88 KB |
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Full MoCA response attached!
Some may not have noticed it yet, so this comment. Full response from MoCA (all the pages) are now attached to this post via slideshare. Original post only contained the first few pages of their response - just the executive summary.
Excellent job - RTI for MoCA capacity calculation report
Syed, Rithesh,
Excellent job on getting this from the MoCA. No praise is too high for your efforts. I need some time to read the whole report.
A cursory scan indicates that the security check area and the security hold area are bottlenecks according to MoCA as far as terminal throughput goes. One small nitpick that I have is that they have substituted static security hold capacity as the throughput/hr. They say that the security hold (domestic+swing) can hold a max of 1200 at any point of time. That cannot become the throughput/hr. If passengers wait only 30 mins on an average at the security hold area - this translates to 2400/hr throughput. (A road capacity is not the length*width/area of 1PCU).
Because of my background in supply chain management, I have some experience in building and running simulation software. I plan to simulate the terminal building dynamics on some free simulation software (easy to download and use). Might take 15 days to do it, but with all this data it is too tempting not to try it.
Regards,
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.
Some observations from the MoCA report
First off - I eat my words. The AAI team has done a pretty good job on assessing BIAL. They have followed a pretty good process and have been data based. Though I think at times they have fitted data to arrive at the 1200/hr peak throughput - then number appears too often. I also see they provide for 3.5 sqm/PHP at the baggage area and only 2.5 sqm/PHP for the security hold area. Not sure why they think that a passenger needs more space while collecting his bags.
BIAL has escaped lightly only because of the fall in air traffic in India. The airport is more than adequate based on the passenger forecasts at the time they started building it (4.5 million in 2008? and probably going to 10 million in 2012 or 2013). I have not saved these numbers from their earlier website which had put the traffic forecast for Bangalore.
They also have a very difficult demand pattern to deal with. They have just two hours where departing passengers exceed 1000/hr. It looks like they have tried to "manage" those two hours (and our MoCA and other overseers have not forced the issue either).
They have not provided any meaningful space between check-in and security that would put a bit less pressure on the security hold area. No lounges, restaurants, cafes, nothing. Even a 2500-3000m2 space would have helped a lot and cost them probably Rs.20-30 crores in construction costs. Even a mezzanine above the check-in hall would have helped. Security seems another bottleneck and they have not provided for adding any more gates. They could have provided for 15 aero-bridges by extending arms on either side of the terminal. I don't buy that crap that Kiran dished out that aerobridges are not efficient - I was too polite to say that that day.
The MoCA and BIAL need to sit together and bring out a fresh traffic forecast for the next 4-5 years (with inputs from airlines as well) and see what needs to be done in the short and medium term to ensure that they do justice to all the land that has been given to them at throwaway rates. Their primary job is to run a good airport and they need to do that well. (I personally think that the airline industry will be smashed out of shape for the next 2-3 years and BIAL will be fine; but my personal opinion should not matter).
Srivathsa
Drive safe. It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.