Airlines, staff want existing airports to stay

i wish the industry lobbies the center to speedup the clearances for rail (1-2 years). lobby laloo for crs. need to track down the exact status of that DPR. did it get state clearence? what happens if we have pres rule?

Second runway not the answer to congestion (The Hindu) The old demand to retain the HAL airport for civilian flights is back. With the phenomenal increase in air traffic to and from Bangalore in the last five years, the Bangalore International Airport Limited’s (BIAL) top brass was under immense pressure to let the old airport handle at least the domestic flights. But BIAL’s refusal to do so, and its assertion that a second runway at Devanahalli would solve the problem is now being questioned. Traffic expectations “BIAL’s business plan was based on traffic of 3.7 million passengers a year. Today, that figure has already crossed 10 million. The capacity of the present runway will saturate in two years. The number of aircraft movements in a day will touch 500 in less than two years,” said a top HAL Airport official to The Hindu. Problems There is another problem: a second runway will add to the air congestion because the Indian Air Force (IAF) Air Base at Yelahanka is just a few kilometres away. “Even if the second runway takes off at Devanahalli, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) will have a lot of bottlenecks and congestion. BIAL and the Air Force Base will generate 500 to 700 aircraft movements daily, thus causing big problems,” said an official. Implications The new airport might just face the same air safety problems that the HAL airport now endures. Recently, a domestic flight that had been allowed to land had to abandon the effort mid-flight because the pilot spotted another aircraft on the same runway. With more flights being added almost every other month, the situation could only get more dangerous. According to the HAL airport official, all the BIAL stakeholders were ensured of returns even before the airport became operational. “There is a justifiable reason to renegotiate the agreement,” the official noted. Hub status The argument that the Devanahalli airport could eventually become a hub, too, has its problems. South India already has a lot of international airports with direct flights from locations such as Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Hyderabad. “There is so much competition for the hub status. You cannot expect a passenger from Kochi to come all the way to Bangalore to catch an international flight. The argument is not very convincing.” Too far With barely four months to go for the BIAL airport’s official launch, the connectivity to the Devanahalli aerodromme appears nowhere near perfection. For just a half hour flight to Chennai, a passenger would have to travel for two and a half hours by road from the city to Devanahalli, and spend another 1.5 hours at the airport. The Shatabdi Express could be a more economical and faster option! =============== My question: What were they doing all these days?

official is like we say, 'my friend who works there was saying that NRN is going to paint the head office black'. it must have gone through a bunch of reviews and clearances from the aviation ministry. irrespective of projections, the civial aviation ministry approved BIAL master plan is designed for 40 mil. i.e., they knew that eventually BIAL will have to handle > 500 flights/ day even at the clearance stage. there are no path breaking innovations hapenning in the technology involved in handling air traffic. what ever is there is likely to be current for another 10-20 years. the basic tech even in the US is not much different from India. infact the improvements US is planning now, india too has set the ball rolling. look for GAGAN navigation system. here is a basic article on gagan. in a rush couldn't put in a more detailed link http://www.mycoordinates....