Bengaluru’s international airport is expecting passenger traffic to surge by 70% over the next two years as multinational companies pour money into the city known as the Silicon Valley of India.
Airport authorities laid out plans on Thursday for a nearly
$2 billion investment that will add a new terminal and a second runway,
boosting the airport’s capacity to 45 million passengers per year.
The Kempegowda International Airport, already the third
busiest in India with 27 million passengers in 2017-18, is expecting traffic to
triple in the next 10 years.
Authorities have said that they plan to make Bengaluru
Airport as big as the Heathrow Airport in London. (London’s Heathrow Airport
had about 78 million passengers walk through its terminals in 2017)
Along with a new terminal, Bangalore International Airport
Ltd is also nearing completion of a second runway, capable of handling Airbus’s
A380s(The World’s largest aircraft) and operating in near zero visibility.
The parallel runway construction at Kempegowda will be
finished by the end of September 2019. The second runway will be four kilometre
long.
The new terminal T2 will be built in two phases. The first
phase will have 25 million passenger capacity. The new terminal will be
environment-friendly and will adhere to the ‘The city of gardens’ image of
Bengaluru. The terminal building will have lush green cover with trees specific
to the city.
By September 2019, 3,000 acre will be developed out of the
4,000 acre the airport has. The airport is also in talks with airlines in India
to make the Bengaluru airport their hub.
India’s total passenger traffic rose about 16.5 % in
2017-2018 to nearly 309 million, according to the Airports Authority of India,
making it one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Boeing Co
expects the country to become the third-largest commercial aviation market by
the early 2023.
Passengers travelling to the Chennai airport will soon be
able to shop at a mall, watch a movie & stay in a hotel.
Airports Authority Of India is going to build these
facilities in the 2 multi-level car parks which are being build on either side of
the airport.
The ministry of environment and forest has given the green signal
for construction of these facilities as part of the six-level 2,000-car park
project.
Here are the details of this project:
The mall and multiplex will come up in the
complex on the east side of the airport metro station while the hotel will come
up on the west side.
There will be seven levels of parking in the
east block and six levels in the west block.
The parking lot with its mall and hotel would be
connected to the airport building using a link bridge
This link bridge would connect to the walkalator
tube that runs parallel to the domestic and international terminal
Initially, the mall and the hotel were meant
primarily for the passengers but visitors too would be able to make use of
them.
The hotel will help transit passengers find good accommodation
without travelling to the city. Transit rooms are no longer available at the
airport as the old domestic terminal complex, which housed them, has been
pulled down to construct an integrated terminal.
The airport currently sees a traffic of more than 5,000 cars
a day. The multi-level car park will also be of help when the integrated
terminal is completed.
AAI has started work which is expected to be completed by July
2020.
If you pay close attention to most things you purchase at an
airport, you’ll notice that they are mostly wrapped in plastic.
However, in a bid to make the airports greener, the Airports
Authority of India (AAI) has imposed a ban on single-use plastics at 129
airports across the country.
According to a statement made by AAI, all airports will
gradually become plastic-free, and this is the first step that the authority is
taking towards going green.
Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Indore, Kolkata, Madurai, Pune, Raipur, Tirupati, Trichy, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Vizag airports have already been declared plastic free. These airports were selected on the basis of the third-party assessment carried out by the Quality Council of India(QCI).
Various steps have been undertaken to eliminate single-use
plastic items at passenger terminals and city side. These steps include banning
of single-use plastic items like straws, plastic cutlery, plastic plates etc.
Elaborating upon the next step in this implementation, AAI
said that it has also asked the QCI to check how the ban has been implemented
at 34 airports across the country that handle about 10 lakh passengers every
year.
Going a step ahead in making airports green, the AAI plans
to use plastic waste to lay new roads and repair old ones on the city-side of
its Chennai airport. The pilot project will be undertaken in either Madurai,
Chennai or Thiruvananthapuram.
The project will be implemented for city-side roads first,
and if successful, it will also be extended to run along the compound wall of
the airports and later, on taxiways.
Cab services driven by women for female passengers were
flagged off at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport(KIA) on Monday.
Karnataka State Tourism Development Corp (KSTDC) and
Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) launched an all-women-run taxi service,
Go Pink Cabs.
As the project is being run on an experimental basis, there
are currently 10 taxis available, piloted by women drivers.
Apart from Uber, Ola, Karnataka Taxi, MegaCabs and Meru
Cabs, women will now be able to book a Go Pink Cabs ride from KIA.
The cabs will be equipped with safety features, such as GPRS
tracking and an SOS switch in case of any emergency. Solo female travellers or
group of women can avail the cab services.
The pink cab service will be functional 24 hours and priced
at Rs 21.50 per km during the day and Rs 23.50 per km at night.
According to KSTDC Managing Director Kumar Pushkar, the
service has been implemented with an objective to provide a safe and secure
mode of transport for women travellers from the airport, while also creating
opportunities for women drivers to be self-employed.
The initiative is an effort to contribute to the
socio-economic development of women from villages around the airport by
recruiting women drivers from the vicinity.
Based on passenger feedback and demand, Go Pink Cabs will
expand its fleet in the months to come.
Every frequent flyer knows that flight delays are a way of
life.
And most travellers can guess when a flight will be delayed
depending on circumstances like ongoing bad weather.
But there have been instances when flights have been delayed
due to strange and bizarre reasons which have left travellers baffled.
Get ready to have your mind blown cause here are 10 strange
and crazy reasons why flights have been delayed.
1. Scorpion Stings A Passenger
In August 2018, a passenger was stung on an Alaskan Airlines
flight to Portland, Oregon.
The flight originated in Los Cabos, Mexico and was preparing
to take off from LAX when the incident happened. The delay cost the airline
about 50 total minutes, which doesn’t seem to be too bad.
But, the airline is yet to figure out how did a scorpion get
on an airplane.
2.Snakes On An Airplane
Well, the incident is not exactly like how it happened in
the movie, but the thought of a snake on an airplane can scare even the bravest
of flyers.
In 2013, a small snake forced the grounding of a Japan-bound
Qantas flight in the Australian city of Sydney. The snake, which was
non-venomous, was about eight inches long.
The flight took off the next day ,however passengers were
booked into hotels for their overnight layover. By the way, this was not the
first or only snake incident for Qantas that year and a similar incident
happened the year before.
3.Flight Attendants Fighting
In 2012, two flight attendants manning an American Eagle
flight from JFK to Washington-Reagan (DCA) couldn’t see eye-to-eye on something.
The argument got so heated up that the cockpit crew
determined it was necessary to turn the airplane around and head back to JFK ,where
it remained for nearly four hours.
It’s hard to believe that the issue was so big that the attendants couldn’t
work with each other for an hour, but supposedly
they didn’t!
4.Mice Situation
Last year a Qatar Airways flight from Madrid to Doha was
delayed for more than six hours after a mouse was found in the cabin.
Much to the mouse’s surprise, passengers were significantly
alarmed by its presence on the airplane.
On landing at the Barajas Airport in Madrid, the plane had
to be fumigated which resulted in a 6-hour delay of the return flight.
5.Slow-Moving Turtles
More than 400 diamondback terrapin turtles managed to find
their way to New York City’s JFK Airport, with several of them actually making
their way onto the airport’s runways and taxiways, leading to several flight
delays.
The incident happened again after a few years which caused
flights to get delayed by an hour.
According to experts, turtles had been using the same route
to migrate prior to JFK’s existence, which is why such incidents have occurred
in the past.
6.Asking Passengers To Pay For Jet Fuel
When an Air France flight was redirected from Beirut to
Damascus because of civil unrest in the August of 2012, the crew asked
passengers to scrape together whatever cash they could to pay for fuel.
The Syrian authorities declined to pay for the fuel, and
alternate arrangements were made, however, the confusion caused a delay of more
than 2 hours.
To be fair, it’s still better than landing in a country on
brink of a war.
7.Improperly Served Nuts
In 2014 vice president of Korean Air & daughter of the
airlines owner, Heather Cho, made headlines all over the world when she forced
a flight leaving JFK, to head back to the airport.
She was offered macadamia nuts in a packet instead of a
plate, which didn’t go down well with her.
She forced the flight attendants to kneel before her and wanted
them thrown out of the airplane. She was later escorted off the premises by the
police and was eventually arrested and sentenced to one year in jail.
8.Boy Band’s Shopping Spree
American sensations “One Direction” delayed an entire British
Airways flight from Heathrow (LHR) to LAX for 15 minutes so that they could do
some duty-free shopping.
According to a band spokesman, the band members had left the
airport between flights and had been stuck in traffic on the way back to LHR, however
they were spotted by fans shopping inside the terminal.
9.A Lawn Chair Got In The Way Of The Airplane
Presumably lacking space in his garden, Larry Walters, an American
citizen, decided to tie industrial
balloons to his lawn chair to enjoy a cold beer mid-air.
A Pan Am flight had to alter its course, at 16,000 feet
incase he flew up that high, causing the flight o delay.
10.Passenger Opens Emergency Door By Mistake
In 2016, one of the 130 passengers aboard a China Southern Airlines flight leaving Chengdu Airport (CTU) opened the emergency door just before take-off, leading to a delay of more than an hour.
The passenger later explained that he thought the door was a window and just wanted to “get some fresh air.”
For the 4th time this month, fog disrupted flight
operations at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport with 38 departures
being delayed on Sunday morning.
Around 11 arriving flights were also delayed as fog
enveloped the airport for the second time in three days. On Friday morning, 50
flights were affected due to the same reason.
According to the Bangalore International Airport Limited,
four flights, including three Air India flights from Ahmedabad, Vishakhapatnam
and Dubai, and another Indigo flight from Delhi were diverted to Chennai and
Hyderabad airports.
With an old Instrument Landing System in place at the KIA,
fog-related disruptions have become an annual affair and are expected to last
till February this year.
However, the commencement of flight operations on newly
launched Runway 2, expected from September this year, will bring good news for
KIA passengers.
Runway 2 comes equipped with a mechanism to help flight
operations continue during foggy conditions as well as with improvised
facilities for landing during low visibility.
In Delhi, however, there is no improvement in the situation,
after 41 flights were delayed again due to heavy fog.
Delhi International Airport Limited on December 6 said that
the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) is fully prepared to handle
flight operations during dense fog.
The very next day, 362 flights were delayed and 38
cancelled. In fact, since the first week of December, there have been regular
delays and cancellations at India’s busiest airport that handles 1,300 arrivals
and departures every day. And it has hit passengers hard.
Passengers boarding airplanes for destinations like Kolkata, Srinagar, Pune and Mumbai had to stay put at the airport for over four hours as eight flights were delayed from the Chandigarh International airport due to poor visibility.
An Air India official said that the Alliance Air morning
flight got delayed by around two hours owing to poor visibility. The ones
majorly affected were flights arriving from Delhi as three of seven flights got
delayed.
The flight scheduled to depart at 8:20 am, departed at 9:52
am, post the delay of 1 hour 32 minutes. He also said that the flight had a
delayed departure from Delhi at 7 am while the scheduled time was 5:55 am.
IndiGo flight from Kolkata, which was supposed to arrive at
7:30 am, arrived at 12:30 pm because of the delayed departure. It departed at
9.20 am while it was scheduled to leave at 4:50 am.
The IndiGo flight from Srinagar got delayed as well, making
its arrival at 3:23 against its scheduled arrival time of 10.45 am. The flight
departed late at 2.15 pm against its scheduled departure of 9.30 am from
Srinagar.
The Air India flight from Pune, who’s scheduled arrival time
was 2:55 pm, was delayed by 1 hour 14 minutes and arrived at 4.09 pm.
Likewise, the flights departing from Chandigarh departed
late. Flights of Air Asia from Bengaluru, IndiGo from Mumbai and Bengaluru, Air
India from Delhi, and Jet Airways from Delhi were delayed between 45 minutes an
hour and a half.
Air India, has stated to temporarily withdraw its morning
Delhi-Chandigarh-Delhi flight owing to poor visibility at the airport.
Also, the Air India Kullu-Chandigarh-Kullu flight has also
been withdrawn till January 15 due to bad weather conditions at the Bhunter and
Chandigarh airports
The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which guards
airports across the country, has raised concerns over increase in incidents of
people entering airports using fake E-tickets.
The CISF has said that 140 such incidents had been recorded
in 2018 while 111 cases were registered in 2017.
The issue assumes significance as incidents of people
entering airports illegally have increases every year. In 2015 and 2016, number
of such cases was less than 100.
Though the CISF does not suspect any terror angle with
regard to such cases, but the force considers it as a major threat to security
of airports. It suspects that such incidents may lead to some major incident if
not curbed.
They say most of the cases involved individuals who
illegally entered the airport terminal to see off family members or friends.
Others using fake e-tickets were attributed to ignorance of the rules.
Those entering the airport illegally using these method seem
to have taken advantage of the present CISF practice of checking the date and
departure time of the flight and match the name on the ticket to a photo ID
card.
Considering the threat, the CISF and the Civil Aviation
Ministry both want to implement a new entry system for airports using a uniform
identity. The CISF is pressing for implementation of biometric system for
travellers to enter airports and the concept of DigiYatra.
The passenger would be asked to either create or use the
unique identity at the time of the booking of the ticket. Officials say this
method would be optional, as would be the choice of which ID the passenger
wants to use, including Aadhaar.
Officials are also mulling the use of barcodes or QR codes
to authenticate tickets and verify the identities of the individuals presenting
them at the gates to the terminals.
However, with the programme not rolled out yet, it remains
to be see what methods the CISF and other security agencies are likely to use.
