HYDERABAD

Hyderabad Airport is currently India’s 5th largest airport, but rapid traffic growth (up 55.7% in the first half of 2006/07, on top of 40% growth in 2005/06) means that it may soon overtake Kolkata. The expansion is being driven by the city’s emergence as a new technology hub alongside Bangalore. An increasing number of multinationals have established operations in the city in recent years.

To accommodate this growth, a new Greenfield airport is currently under construction at Shamshabad. The airport is being built and operated on a public-private partnership. The consortium is led by GMR (63%), who were also awarded Delhi Airport in January 2006, and includes Malaysia Airports (11%), the Airports Authority of India (13%) and the state government of Andhra Pradesh (13%).

The new airport, which is scheduled to open in March 2008, will be known as Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, named after a former Prime Minister of India. The airport will have an opening capacity of 12 million passengers and 100,000 tonnes freight. A number of concession agreements have been awarded for the new facility such as cargo (Menzies Aviation); hotel (Accor); fuel farm (Reliance Industries Limited); and catering (LSG Sky Chefs and Sky Gourmet).

Upon opening, the current airport at Begumpet, which is located close to the city will be limited to military training and some general aviation services. There have been demands by some of the socialist political parties to continue commercial services at Begumpet and to develop a low cost airport to provide competition with the new facility. However, at this stage, there are no plans to accommodate these requests and Shamshabad will be the only commercial airport in the city.