New airport terminal will be ready in couple of months:Director

Tiruchirapalli, Nov 3 (UNI) The new terminal, constructed at a cost of Rs 79 crore for the Airport here, would be ready for use in a couple of months, Airport Director Sreekumar said today.

Talking to newspersons here, he said out of this Rs 79 crore, Rs 45 crore had been spent on construction of buildings and rest for providing electricity, escalators, furnitures, and other infrastructure facilities and basic amenities.

Airports Authority of India Deputy General Manager (Engineering Civil) M Shivaraju said the new terminal would have 7,000 sq metre in the ground floor and another 4,700 sq metre on the first floor.

He said the new terminal would be capable of handling 200 incoming and 200 outgoing passengers at a time.

It would have three escalators, five lifts, 13 check-in-points, one common user terminal, 16 immigration counters, eight customs counters and two security holders, he added.

He said almost all the building materials, especially zipping roof technology, were imported from Singapore, South Africa, Korea, London and China.

The AAI had ordered a Chinese firm to supply three aero-bridges each at a cost of Rs 2 crore, he added.

Replying to a question, Mr Sreekumar said this year the authorities had fixed 50 per cent growth target in the passengers movement.

But due to sudden hike on the air fare, it would be difficult to achieve this target, he added.

However, after the proposed introduction of the Tiruchirapalli-Kualalumpur direct flight service by the Air Asia from December one next, at least 20 to 30 per cent growth in the passenger traffic during the current fiscal was expected, he added.

He said the Singapore based silk air, Air Arabia and Oman Airlines had already conducted a potential study towards operating flights to various destinations from here.

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