Spread over 5,000 hectares of land with proposed four runways; the planned Greenfield International airport at Jewar will be ‘India’s biggest’, as touted by the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) officials. According to them it will be bigger than Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
In a latest release, YEIDA CEO, Dr. Arun Vir Singh said, “It has been expected that that the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) will reach its saturation point with a 100-million passenger count by 2024-25, which will give rise to the need for a second airport in NCR. That’s why this proposed Jewar airport is built keeping in mind the future prospects for next 50 years.”
After a long gap of 16 years, finally the dream of proposed airport at Jewar has again became a reality. Most of the formalities and documentation part are about to clear and officials are expecting to start the work on this airport by the end of this year.
Recently, renowned audit firm PwC, who is working on the Techno feasibility report of the airport, has projected that the proposed airport is all set to cater 80 million passengers once it will get operational by 2022-23. It has been decided to build the Greenfield Jewar airport in four phases. Initially, two runways will be constructed to start the operations early so as to divert the traffic from IGI airport.
Currently, IGI airport is one of the busiest airports of the country followed by Mumbai’s Chatrapti Shivaji international airport and Bengaluru’s Airport on second and third busiest respectively. The Delhi airport currently handles 60 million passengers per annum, which is likely to be doubled by 2023.