The making of India's biggest airport

 Away from some of the more visible projects in Delhi, one of the biggest construction efforts in the country is about four months away from completion. Over 20,000 workers are working round the clock everyday—among them 100 foreign nationals working in the planning and construction effort—to give wings to one of India's most ambitious projects: Delhi's new airport terminal, T3, that will cater to both international and domestic flights.

Work is on at a frantic pace to meet the March 2010 deadline. About 82 per cent work is over and its developers—the GMR group and Fraport (Frankfurt Airport)—are confident the airport will be ready in the next four months and ready to handle 27 million passengers a year.

With 78 aerobridges, of which 71 are already installed, the new terminal will be one of the few in the world to service all aircraft through aerobridges. Changi airport in Singapore has 64 aerobridges. The terminal building covers an area of about 5 million square feet—just the area of its roof accounts for 20 acres. While the developers have to get the terminal ready by March 2010, it may get operational only by July after all the certifications are in place.

With its scale and size, the new terminal is set to change the traveller's perception. For instance, the forecourt where vehicles line up to drop passengers, will have 10 lanes with dedicated lanes for buses and cabs.

Once inside the departure hall, there will be six check-in islands with 168 check-in counters. This will be an integrated terminal for both domestic and international flights, which will make it easier for transit passengers. However, the plan is to allow only those domestic airlines which fly international to start operations from here. This could put the low cost carriers at a slight disadvantage as they will be located at the recently operationalised Terminal 1D.

So, the check-in area will be common and then the terminal divides itself into two wings. Both sides have a boarding pier each which extends to 1.2 km from one end to the other with 48 boarding gates. Most of these have already been constructed. Given the long distances, some 90 travelators have been installed which includes the longest in Asia measuring 118 m.

Such is the magnitude of the exercise that the developers could not find a supplier who would meet their demand for granite. Ultimately, a vendor was located in Bahrain from where the granite needed for the flooring is being imported. The glass curtains that have to be fixed at a particular angle too had to be brought from China.

Already, delegations from the Beijing airport, Changi airport and Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, among others, have visited the construction site. What has come in for particular praise is the open space called the 'canyon' where a glass roof allows the entire arrival area to be lit up. Bridges, just above the arrival area, meant for departure passengers have glass corridors that permits arrival and departure passengers to see each other.

The one advantage of having boarding piers as wings of what is roughly like a large 'H' like structure means the duty-free shopping hall in the centre is not cluttered because of rush at boarding gates. Besides this, a multi-level car parking facility for 4,300 cars is well on course to be ready by next year.

Recently, Delhi overtook Mumbai as the city handling maximum air passengers with a figure slightly less than 24 million for 2008-09. This terminal will be able to handle 27 million next year and capacity would be enhanced to 34 million by 2012. This compares with some of the best—Changi handles 22 million passengers, Heathrow about 25 million and the new Beijing airport about 45 million. And going by the understanding reached with the government, it should reach 100 million by 2026—the last phase of this construction effort.

The developers claim this will be the sixth largest terminal in the world when it opens, but what is more important is that standards are already being rated. The Airport Council International, Geneva, is said to have been rating the under construction terminal every quarter. Its marking is 4.2 while the quality standard set by the government requires a minimum of 3.5.

While these cannot be made official until the end of the financial year, Delhi, apparently, has already climbed to the 24th position going by its scores. Judgment, however, will have to be reserved till it gets functional. Once the new terminal opens, the plan is to keep the current international terminal (T2) as a buffer, which can be used to step up capacity during special occasions like the Commonwealth Games—like Beijing airport has a buffer that was shut after the Olympics.