Consider these facts: Hyderabad is increasingly becoming a hub for domestic airlines; it handles 130 domestic and international flights daily and 3 million passengers annually; and traffic is growing at a scorching 33 per cent (almost twice the rate of Mumbai airport’s 18 per cent) per year.
The current airport is operating under serious capacity constraints, but work has already begun on a new airport on the city’s outskirts where, if all goes well, Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao (or GMR, as he is popularly known) would like to see the world’s largest aircraft, an Airbus-380, touch down in 2008.
In what is the largest greenfield project for the low-profile, Bangalore-based GMR Group so far, Rao is investing Rs 1,500 crore to build the new airport in Hyderabad with a capacity for handling 5 million passengers in the first phase (early 2008).
By the end of the second phase (2018), the airport will have been expanded to handle over 20 million passengers. By that time the group would have sunk over Rs 5,000 crore into the project.
But that is not proving sufficient to slake the group’s ambition to become the country’s largest airport infrastructure and services company.
GMR (with German giant Fraport) is also aggressively bidding for the Delhi and Mumbai airports that have been opened up for privatisation. If it lucks out, the group will need to shell out Rs 5,000 crore each for the modernisation of both airports, which carry four-five times more traffic than Hyderabad.
