Non-availability of land has affected expansion work at the Coimbatore International Airport, its Director and senior Airport Authority of India (AAI) official G Prakash Reddy said today.
The airport here was waiting for expansion for the last few years but it could not be taken up due to non-availability of land, resulting in congestion, particularly in the parking lot and bays for flights, he said.
Unless AAI was able to get the land immediately, it would become very difficult for the airport to function as it would at least take a minimum of five years to construct buildings and infrastructure for the expansion, he said.
Reddy was addressing a three-day aero show "Aeroplus 2017", organised by the Nehru College of Aeronautics and Applied Sciences here, which opened today.
He said that under the Regional Connectivity Scheme of the Civil Aviation Ministry to operationalise smaller airports, work had already began on connecting Salem and Puducherry airports with Chennai and Bengaluru.
With nearly 500 small airports across the country not operational, the Ministry had taken the initiative to make 70 to 75 of them functional by allotting 70 to 80 seats over 120 routes, Reddy said.
Work had been started to connect Salem and Puducherry with Chennai and Bengaluru and the rest would be completed in two to three years, he added.
Reddy said there was a 20 to 25 per cent annual growth in the aviation industry, adding that passenger traffic, which was 180 million in 2015-16, with domestic numbers being pegged at 100 million, was expected to cross the 250 million mark in near future.
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