Chennai is all set to get a second airport in the next few years with the Centre and state government rolling out the project to meet future demand. Chennai, which has many automobile companies as well as old manufacturing companies, is in need of a big airport.
Last year, the state government announced its decision to build a second airport for Chennai to meet the increasing passenger traffic.
The second airport is to come at a place called Parandur which is around 60km from the city. Last year, the state government announced its decision to build a second airport for Chennai to meet the increasing passenger traffic.
“Our end goal is to make Tamil Nadu a $1 trillion economy. For that we need to achieve $100 billion in exports and when we look at the infrastructure, we realise that in Tamil Nadu, specifically in Chennai, we need a new airport. This will be important for us to reach a $1 trillion economy,” said a senior minister of the DMK government.
Chennai’s existing airport at Meenambakkam will co-exist with the new airport that is planned to be built, and operate simultaneously.
“The existing airport (within the city) is not equipped to cater to our growing demands in the future so we certainly need a new greenfield airport which will take care of the future demands,” the minister said.
“With the present airport likely to reach saturation point soon in terms of capacity and with complaints pouring in from passengers about the congestion during peak hours and lack of hygiene, the government went ahead with its proposal to build a second airport at an estimated cost of ₹20,000 crore and subsequently identified 4,790 acres of land at Parandur,” said an additional chief secretary.
Parandur was chosen as it is on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway and is also very close to Sriperumbudur which has all the automobile companies. “On a daily basis many CEOs as well as high-level officials of various companies land in Chennai airport and go by road to their factories. Once the new airport is ready, it will not take more than 30 minutes for the company officials to reach their factories,” said the official.
Government sources said that both Tata Group and Adani Group are trying to win the contract to build the new airport. Recently Adani Group chief Gautam Adani as well as Tata Group CEO N Chandrasekaran called on chief minister M K Stalin and held discussions on various projects coming up in the state as well as the new airport.