The Kolkata airport is barely 10 years old. New by definition. But it is plagued by a litany of problems, from insufficient space in front of the terminal building and chaotic traffic to a lack of basic amenities in its passenger areas, like aerobridges, washrooms and food stalls.
Several airport officials said faulty planning of the integrated terminal building, which became operational in 2013, leads to passenger inconvenience.
The terminal has only five lanes in front, both arrival and departure, without proper demarcation. The result — chaos in front of the arrival level as passengers struggle to get into their vehicles with luggage.
There are only 18 aerobridges that force many flights to park in the remote bays, away from the terminal, and passengers have to wait for nearly an hour sometimes for their luggage.
No immediate relief appears to be in sight because the giant terminal building with acres of unused space inside is still much below capacity in terms of passengers.
A new building is unlikely to be sanctioned anytime soon.
Civil aviation ministry sources said the projection of passenger and flight growth of the airport after the Covid pandemic does not indicate that the terminal building will be saturated before 2028. The building has a capacity to handle 26 million passengers a year. The authorities are expanding the space inside the terminal, which will allow it to handle two million more.
The slower growth rate, compared to pre-pandemic years, has made the authorities defer the sanction of phase II of the airport expansion plan. In the second phase, a new terminal will handle 11 million more passengers.
A decision might be taken in 2026 about the fate of the expansion project, sources said.
The expansion plan includes demolition of the existing old domestic building adjacent to the new integrated terminal. An extension of the integrated terminal, spread across 80,000sqm, was to come up there.
According to officials, Kolkata airport handled 22.02 million passengers and nearly 1.66 lakh flights in 2019-20. The numbers dipped to 7.7 million passengers and 72,000 flights in 2020-21 during the Covid pandemic.
“Passenger growth is taking place but the numbers are not as high as the pre-pandemic level,” said an airport official.
In 2022-23, the number of passengers using the airport was close to 18 million and the number of flights 1.37 lakh.
The numbers are around 15 million passengers and 1.06 lakh flights till December 2023.
“It is projected that the existing terminal building can reach the saturation figure of 28 million, with the extended capacity, not before 2027-28,” said an official of the civil aviation ministry.
“So, there is no justification for a new terminal coming up before that. Also, the revenue will not be so much to justify the investment,” he said.
In terms of revenue, in 2019-20, the airport earned a profit of around Rs 600 crore. In 2020-21, the airport suffered a loss of Rs 200 crore. Last fiscal, officials said, the airport’s profit was more than Rs 300 crore but nowhere near the pre-pandemic level.
According to the masterplan, there would be two new terminal buildings in two phases, the first would handle 11 million passengers annually while the second one 22 million a year.
The airport Metro station is supposed to connect all three buildings through walkalators and escalators while two bridges, like the one now connecting the terminal from VIP Road, would take passengers to these buildings, said an official.
But it all depends on when the plans would be approved by the authorities in Delhi.