2 The Infamous HAL airport.. 1
2.2 A comparison of HAL to other single runway airports. 2
2.3 The fundamental problems. 3
3.2 BIAL – what more could have been done. 5
1 Introduction
I am an aviation buff who has been regularly following all aspects of global aviation, right from planes to airports. I have been actively following the progress of the new Bangalore airport since 2000/2001 with http://www.karnataka.com/watch/blr-airport/ being one of the earliest sites. I had corresponded with Narayana Murthy on several occasions when he was initially involved with the effort. Subsequently, within the past 3 years http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=248849 and http://bangalore.praja.in/ have been the primary sources of information and interaction with other enthusiasts with regards to BIAL.
In the past few months I wanted to put together 2 or 3 pages on my views about Indian airports and the ones in Bangalore in particular(both old and new). It isn’t that I am imposing my views on anyone but the comparison of global airports (not just the comparisons in this article) to Indian airports speak for themselves. I finally found time to do it
2 The Infamous HAL airport
2.1 Overview
I am perfectly sure that nobody misses the old HAL airport terminal building and there is no doubt that we needed a new airport. But, the biggest question is was the HAL airport used to it’s capacity and could it have been better? The typical overcrowded scenario in the terminal building as well as the crowded chaotic airside apron would lead one to believe that is was operating beyond capacity and super saturated. So, let’s compare the HAL airport of April 2008 to some of the busiest single runway airports (operational & non operational) in the period from 1997 to 2008.
2.2 A comparison of HAL to other single runway airports
|
| Old HAL airport | Kai Tak | San Diego(SAN) |
| Total Acreage | ? | 824.83 | 614 |
| Approx. aircraft Movements per day | 300 | 438 (as of 96/97) |
|
| Passengers handled(in millions) per annum | 9.93 in 2007 | 29.5 (as of 96/) | 17.5 (as of 2006) |
| Aerobridges | 3 | ? | 41 (as of 2006) |
| Runway length in ft. | 10850 | 11122 | 9401 |
|
| John Wayne(SNA) | Gatwick(LGW) |
| Total Acreage | 501 | 1678 |
| Approx. aircraft Movements per day | 250 (see notes below) | 730(as of 2007) |
| Passengers handled(in millions) per annum | 9.6 (as of 2006) | 35 |
| Aerobridges | 14 (as of 2006) | Approx 65 |
Notes -
1) Since SNA airport has a dedicated short runway for general aviation and a longer main runway for commercial operations I just took the figure of 91,358 annual commercial operations for my calculations.
Sources -
| Kai Tak | see pg. 10 http://www.cad.gov.hk/reports/an1998-1999/c1_dr.pdf |
| San Diego | |
| John Wayne | |
| London Gatwick |
Granted that all airports are not perfect and have their problems in terms of passenger terminal overcrowding, air traffic congestion & land side traffic congestions but SAN, SNA & LGW are superior facilities (so was Kaitak) providing ample facilities on both land side as well as air side for smooth operations on a scale much larger than the old HAL airport.
2.3 The fundamental problems
In my opinion the following problems plagued the old HAL airport (and to some extent still plague the Indian aviation industry in general) –
1) Notorious lack of planning, exection & gross inefficiency. Be it a public sector bank, bus service, power supply or anything there is no planning & execution, no processes in place and no accountability. Devesh Agarwal’s blog cites runway capacity as a stumbling block limiting an airport’s capacity - http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com/2008/03/real-capacity-of-bengaluru.html . That is not totally true which is proved by Kai Tak, SNA, SAN and LGW. With typical efficiencies seen in developed countries we could have achieved higher productivity from the old HAL airport. Please NOTE, I am not saying BIAL shouldn’t have opened, it is the best thing to have happened; but, I am trying to analyze the deficiencies so that things can be corrected for future world class infrastructure like BIAL in India. All of India’s airports are being run with gross inefficiency and much lower productivity.
2) The notorious single level terminal design which is prevalent in major Indian airport (barring the international terminals at Mumbai and Delhi) further exarcebrates the problem. Imagine departures and arrivals stacked one above the other for the same length of the old HAL airport terminal building, the amount of space available would be double both in the terminal building and the curbside.
Furthermore, the lack of a pier councourse design leads to passenger congestion in the main terminal building. Imagine a big rectangular dual level passenger terminal building with concourses extending on either side. One needn’t look any further than the design of the SNA airport which is smaller in area compared to the old HAL airport, has a shorter runway (less than 6000 feet), and is NOT a 24 hour airport but still handles comparable traffic. Here is the terminal layout which would have perfectly suited HAL airport given the airfield characteristics provided there was proper planning and execution.
The main passenger terminal building would be where passengers are processed – passenger drop off, checkin & security check on the upper level AND baggage reclaim, immigration&customs and passenger pickup on the lower level. The new Hyderabad airport seems to have scored on both fronts.
3) All the major Indian airports including the upcoming new ones seem to have a love for having a small terminal with very few passenger aerobridges and prefer to bus their passengers to remote stands or have passengers walk from aircraft parked very near the terminal. To support such a large number of flights/aircrafts we literally have a parallel fleet of buses (capable of filling up a bus terminus) now running within the airfield. An airfield apron is one of the most dangerous environments to operate in; so it is inefficient and dangerous when we have a large number of planes competing for space with a fleet of buses running around & passengers walking around. And, it increases the turn around time for aircraft with the airline having to board the passengers, bus them to their aircraft, disembark them and have them board the aircraft. Also, quite a large team is required to coordinate the logistics of managing this boarding process; the same team could be put to better use if the boarding happens directly from the terminal gate into the aircraft via aerobridges thereby eliminating the buses.
4) And of course, efficiency of operations!!! which is a rarity in Indian airports!!. Please note that SNA has a night curfew hence the total aircraft movements are slightly lower than that of what the HAL airport (24 hour operations) handled. Without a night curfew the same SNA airport could handle way more traffic easily. HAL airport with a longer runway and having NO night restrictions was choking. One more indicator of why runway limitation mentioned in http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com/2008/03/real-capacity-of-bengaluru.html is not entirely true. Also, SNA has a paltry 5701 ft runway and shares an airspace to content with air traffic from LAX (Los Angeles Intl.), Long Beach (LGB) and LGB (Long Beach). By comparison, HAL airport had a long 10,850 foot runway which if planned properly could have accommodated rapid exit taxiways on both ends to allow landing aircrafts to rapidly exit the runway thereby increasing throughput AND most importantly there was NO international or domestic commercial airport within a 250km range of HAL airport thereby giving unlimited airspace availability. We also need to remember that Gatwick airport the busiest single runway airport shares it’s airspace with LHR, STN(Stanstead) & Luton all within a 60 mile range.
5) Not one single airport in India including the green field airports at Hyderabad & Bangalore is built with superior public transport connectivity in mind. It leaves one to wonder what our so called “experts” and the “planning commission” are doing barring the golden quadrilateral project initiated by Vajpayee. A list of world class airports having rail connectivty JFK, EWR, LHR, LGW, ICN, HKG, NRT … and the list goes on. One would have expected Mumbai at least to be on this list given it’s good rail network but once again planning and execution has failed.
6) Other than the Mumbai and Delhi international terminals to some extent; landside road traffic management is virtually non existent at almost all Indian airports. By traffic management I mean grade separation of arrival departure traffic, grade separation of pedestrian traffic, lane discipline, indefinite parking at the curb side in front of the terminal. New Hyderabad airport scores on grade separation of arrival & departure traffic but BIAL has failed to do so. One could only imagine the chaos when the other terminal(s) come up.
3 The future - BIAL
3.1 BIAL – the plusses
The new BIAL that opened on May 24th is definitely the future and the way aviation infrastructure has to go in the country. It is a much larger and spacious terminal with ample space for parking. The airfield itself is huge and has ample space for an additional runway and multiple terminals.
3.2 BIAL – what more could have been done
But, like I have pointed out in the previous section fundamental problems need to be overcome to make flights at a larger scale possible efficiently without chaos. Concourses extending out of the main terminal building, vertical separation of arrivals departures with corresponding landside traffic separation, multi-storeyed car parking structures with direct access to terminals via bridges and an integral ground transportation center with functional train station, bus terminus and taxi, shuttle stands would have been the expectation in the 1st phase from a city with a vision looking into the future; a city which is vital to India’s economy in the 21st century and home to it’s 3rd busiest airport. It will not be far off when Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi vault to among the top 30 busiest airports of the world.
In spite of all the explanations I really do not get why rapid exit taxiways have not been provided on both ends of the runway.
Transport by buses within the airfield must be reduced, even if aerobridges cannot be built due to cost now, concourse gates can have stairs and aircrafts can be parked right near the concourse gates and passengers can board. I have boarded regional jets in such a manner in Atlanta and Dallas. Later on as the airport makes revenue these gates can be converted to aerobridges.
In addition to the SNA layout seen above I feel 2 more layouts shown below would have been suitable for BIAL in the opening of the 1st phase; a fully functional airport where Kingfisher could have immediately started hub operations like for example SYD-BLR-LHR.
This may be too late, but I felt it was natural that the new airport should come up between Mysore & Bangalore somewhere near to the Bangalore-Mysore NICE corridor & rail line. I am sure many other would have thought about this and wondered about this before me.
This would have been like Seattle-Tacoma airport; Dallas-FortWorth airport or Minneapolis-StPaul airport.
3.2.1 Possible Layout - 1
Red box indicates what should have been in phase 1
Go to http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/2583/proposedbialterminaldetin0.jpg if you can't see the above image properly in the blog.
3.2.2 Possible Layout - 2
This is the Bangkok international airport. I have marked a green area which I think should have been a part of the 1st phase. Notice the rail link provision.
Go to http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7307/suvarnabhumiue6.jpg if you can't see the above image properly in the blog.
regards
bialterminal
