New apron and taxiway upgrades boost flight operations at Chennai Airport

CHENNAI: Chennai Airport has completed a major infrastructure upgrade in its apron area (area where aircraft is parked, loaded, unloaded, refueled, or boarded) and the new developments officially became operational on May 15.

With these improvements, the airport is now equipped to handle a greater number of flights, reducing delays in arrivals and departures.

According to airport authorities, the enhancements are aimed at streamlining operations and improving on-time performance for both passenger and cargo flights.

One of the key changes includes the expansion of parking bays for cargo aircraft, allowing for increased cargo handling capacity at the same time.

Currently, Chennai Airport handles over 470 flight movements daily, utilising two runways:

the primary runway, measuring 3.66 km, and a secondary runway, 2.89 km long.

There are around 130 parking bays at the airport, with nearly 60 dedicated to domestic and international flights.

The remaining bays accommodate cargo aircraft, private jets, air ambulances, and aircraft under maintenance, many of which are parked in remote locations.

A significant part of the development included modifications to the airport’s taxiways (the routes that connect runways with aprons).

Earlier, slow-moving aircraft’s on curved taxiways often caused delays for incoming flights.

Engineers identified the curved ‘F Taxiway’ as a bottleneck and restructured it into a straight path, now renamed as ‘Taxiway U’, allowing for quicker taxiing.

Additional taxiways are also widened to accommodate faster movement.

To further improve runway efficiency, a new holding point has been constructed near the runway threshold.

This enables arriving aircraft to land without being delayed by preceding aircraft taxiing slowly off the runway.

Cargo operations also saw significant enhancements with the expansion of aprons 7, 8, and 9 that are designated for cargo aircraft.

These upgraded aprons now support the increasing volume of cargo traffic, alleviating previous space constraints and allowing multiple cargo aircraft to operate.

Chennai Airport officials say these developments will boost the airport’s hourly handling capacity, which currently stands at around 50 flights per hour.

With the new infrastructure in place, this number is expected to increase, enabling more efficient flight operations and accommodating the growing demand for both passenger and cargo services.

More development projects are already underway in the apron areas, and officials assure that the continuous upgrades will further enhance Chennai Airport’s capacity and operational efficiency.