The last few days have brought good news for the BIAL consortium, the promoters of the new Bengaluru International Airport (BIA).

Two weeks ago, the new Greenfield airports policy, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, Government of India, specifically protects the monopoly of both BIA and Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA). No new airport will be allowed to be constructed within a radius of 150km (93.75 miles).

Two days ago, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has given its technical clearances to BIA to commence operations. The opening date is now in the hands of the politicians, and is scheduled for May 29, 2008. One can only hope that politics does not rear its ugly head and force a further delay in the opening of the new airport.

Editorial: Flights of ad hocism
Business Standard / New Delhi May 05, 2008

The ad hoc nature of government policy towards airports is no longer a joke, since it has played havoc with both passengers who have to traverse large distances, and those who have invested in new airports on the basis of contractual commitments. A similar ad hoc attitude seems to prevail when deciding which airline will be allowed to fly on international routes, and when it comes to the buying and leasing of aircraft for Air-India, which (by one account) is now unable to pay salaries as a consequence of having exceeding all rational limits while taking loans for working capital. And it goes without saying that there was an ad hoc approach implicit in making the key decisions on airport charges and user fees without first putting in place a regulator for civil aviation.

It was decided years ago that the old airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore would be shut down as soon as the new ones became operational. That was part of a policy which said that new airports would not be permitted within 150 km of an existing one. Now the government seems to be having second thoughts, and the proposition has been put to Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), which has built the new airport outside the city, that low-cost carriers should continue to use the existing airport on the other side of town. And the 150-km rule may be junked in order to allow the setting up of a new airport, on the mainland south of Mumbai. It does not help that contracts with the companies that are building new airports in the southern cities mention the shutting down of existing airports as a pre-condition.

The re-think seems to be the result of a combination of forces. One is the difficulty that passengers face in reaching distant new airports in both Bangalore and Hyderabad when the ground transport links are not satisfactory. A second issue has been the high user charges being imposed by the new airports, charges which initially threatened to be more than the price of a short-haul ticket on a low-cost carrier, and which were therefore revised in another ad hoc exercise once a storm built up on the issue. The third is the pressure (part political and part commercial) to allow second airports to be built for both Mumbai and New Delhi, even before the revamping and expansion of the existing airports is complete.

The stipulation of a minimum distance works well in some contexts (it has served Kerala well, for instance, as its main airports are quite far apart at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode). It may not make sense for metropolitan areas like Mumbai and Delhi, which themselves stretch across 50 km or more, and which therefore have provided for the possibility of second airports. And looking at the way that air traffic is growing, the 150-km limit may seem excessive in the future when the better choice might well be to allow more airports of medium capacity at shorter distances — it would certainly be more convenient for passengers than everyone trudging to one mega-facility that accommodates (say) 50 million or 75 million passengers annually. When the objective conditions suggest that a re-think is called for, it makes sense that it be done coherently, with proper consideration of all the issues and the interests of all affected parties borne in mind. Is that too much to hope for, when an ad hoc approach has ruled for so long?

According to the Financial Times, "The skies over Mumbai are set to face a congestion crisis early next decade with the Indian financial capital's existing international airport likely to be overloaded with passengers even after a $2.3bn expansion is completed, according to the city airport's top executive."

"GV Sanjay Reddy, managing director of Mumbai International Airport, told the Financial Times, would be that if current passenger trends continued, the city's airport would be overwhelmed. "The city is going to be in trouble," he said."

Bangalore needs to be apprehensive of the situation in Mumbai, as it is a precursor to what will happen in Bangalore.

As per BIAL's own data, they are fully booked during peak hours, and all additional expansion will only be permitted in non-peak hours, the same situation as HAL airport is right now. If BIAL chooses to follow IATA guidelines of 550 flights maximum per day on a single runway, a fact confirmed by Mumbai airport, (incidentally, India's largest and most efficient airport in terms of runway operations), Bengaluru International Airport (BIA), has only 22% expansion capability. BIAL does not intend to complete a new runway before 2013, so Bangalore will have to choke its economic growth to satisfy its contract with BIAL.

"BIA is just a glitzy terminal, otherwise it is almost the same as HAL airport". This is what hands-on aero-operations people have told me after their inspection at BIA.

Bangalore and BIAL are placing an enormous amount of trust in each other. Unfortunately in this partnership the flow of complete information seems to be only in one direction. If BIAL management can provide Bangalore with comprehensive and detailed answers to some very simple questions, may be they can allay fears of capacity.

From opening date onwards, projected till the year 2018, BIAL is requested to provide detailed figures for :

1. How many flights per hour during peak hours 6am - 10am and 6pm - 8pm?
2. How many passengers per hour during peak hours 6am - 10am and 6pm - 8pm?
3. How many flights a day?
4. How many passengers per day?
5. How many flights a year?
6. How many passengers per year?
7. How many tons of cargo per year?
8. Projected growth rate year on year for each year, international and domestic, passengers and freight ?

Write to BIAL and ask them for the answers. Their contact details are at this web page. Their e-mail address is contact@bialairport.com.