God's own country Kerala to get its fifth, fully private international airport
CHENNAI: In Kerala, they have their heads in the clouds and eyes on non-residents.
A fifth international airport-and India's first wholly private one-is coming up in a state where no highway is more than half as wide as the National Highways Authority of India's standard minimum of 60 metres.
No other state in the country has as many international airports. Tiny Kerala, where narrow roads are the norm due to lack of land, clearly bets its future on its vast army of non-resident Keralites whose remittances account for 31% of the state's GDP.
Fittingly enough, the new airport is coming up at Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district, where a toy plane flown into a crowd could well hit a non-resident Indian.
"It's going to be the most state-of-the-art airport in the state, with two runways and a taxiway," Gigi George, managing director of the Chennaibased KGS Group, the airport's promoter company, told ET.
George said the company has got every clearance in hand and 750 acres have been acquired for the project.
The Aranmula airport will be close to multiple tourism destinations such as Kumarakom, the backwaters of Alappuzha, and the high ranges of Kumily, the Thekkady tiger reserve, and most of all, the pilgrimage centre of Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Pathanamthitta district.
Kerala has international airports in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi, the last being a joint sector project. Another international airport is being developed under publicprivate partnership (PPP) in Kannur.
Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation Executive Director TP Thomaskutty said the Aranmula airport project would be presented at the forthcoming 'Emerging Kerala' global investor meet in September. He said KGS Group had got some of the clearances for the project. Everybody is not convinced about the viability of a fifth airport in one of the tinier states in the country.
"There are limits to Kerala's air traffic growth, because it is not an industrial economy. Road development in the state would serve more people better," said Abraham Joseph, a retired project engineer of Nedumbassery airport in Kochi, who has been associated with two other airports.
"Even the Kannur airport is one too many in the area, considering that the Kozhikode and Mangalore airports are close to the proposed airport," he said.
God's own country Kerala to get its fifth, fully private international airport - The Economic Times