CHENNAI: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has prepared a draft report after evaluating five locations for the proposed greenfield international airport in the industrial town of Hosur, bordering Bengaluru.
A team of AAI officials visited the sites recently and submitted a prefeasibility draft mentioning their advantages and challenges, as reported by The Hindu.
The sites are: 1. The existing Hosur airstrip owned and run by Pune-based Taneja Aerospace and Aviation Ltd (TAAL); 2. Two km south of the Hosur airstrip located near TAAL; 3. Ten km south of Hosur airstrip near Thogarai Agraharam village in Denkanikottai; 4. Twenty-seven km south east of Hosur airstrip near Ulagam (close to Shoolagiri village); 5. Sixteen km north east of Hosur airport near Dhasapalli.
The sole Hosur airport in Belagondapalli village on the Thally road, also known as Taneja Aerodrome, lies 60 km from Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru and is located close to Bengaluru’s information technology (IT) hub Electronics City.
Among the challenges in the sites are a running waterbody and high tension power lines. The ones that didn't have major issues are TAAL and the site close to TAAL, but as the airspace is controlled by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the project would require the Ministry of Defence's permission, the report added.
Further, as per an agreement with the central government, no other international airport can be set up within 150 km of aerial distance from Bengaluru International Airport for 25 years from the date of its opening, but the stipulated period would expire in a decade (the Kempegowda International Airport commenced operations on May 24, 2008). However, it would still take around 8 years to set up the airport at Hosur.
The proposed Hosur airport would have the capacity to handle 30 million passengers per year and would be developed across 2,000 acres in Hosur. To put this in perspective, the Chennai airport handled less than 22 million passengers in 2023-24.
Once commissioned, the airport will be the fifth major airport in Tamil Nadu after Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchy, and Madurai (the other airports are much smaller in terms of passenger volume).
The Hosur airport is primarily being planned to drive further investment into Tamil Nadu. Among the industrial and manufacturing hubs in the state, Hosur stands out for emerging as one that has both traditional industries like automobile and sunrise sectors like electronics manufacturing. Its proximity to both Chennai and Bengaluru has attracted a significant volume of investment in recent years.