Even as a fifth international airport is being developed in Kerala, the fourth one commissioned five years back is struggling for existence and the additional land requirements of two other airports for meeting the mandatory safety parameters are pending for years.
The Kerala government recently got the centre's nod for developing a greenfield airport close to Sabarimala Ayyappa temple. The proposed airport, which is around 45 kilometres from the Ayyappa shrine, is targeting not just the devotees but the large NRI population of the region as well as tourist and cargo potential.
But the bleak fate of the Kannur international airport is again triggering discussions on whether a state like Kerala needs a fifth international airport while the neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu is having only four international airports.
Both the Kannur airport and the upcoming Sabarimala airport are being developed in public-private-partnership model on the lines of the Kochi international airport.
The Kannur airport commissioned in 2018 is now struggling to meet the expenses as most flights stopped operations mainly due to poor load factors. Now Air India Express and Indigo are only operating from the airport.
A major setback for Kannur airport was the centre's policy not to give permission for foreign carriers to operate from the airport.
Special officer of the Sabarimala airport project V Thulasidas told DH that a similar issue was being anticipated in Sabarimala airport also and hence the investments at the airport would be also made accordingly only.
Thulasidas, who was the first managing director of the Kannur airport, said that Covid-19, which came soon after the commissioning of the Kannur airport, also aggravated the financial crunches of the greenfield airport.
Meanwhile, the long pending demands to allot additional lands for Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode international airports for setting up the mandatory runway-end-safety-area (RESA). The flight mishap at Kozhikode in 2020 and the repeated reminders of the DGCA for setting up RESA have not yielded much result so far.
Kerala Association of Travel Agents president K V Muraleedharan said that apart from setting up airports, the government should also focus on tapping the potential by offering discounts to airlines. Otherwise, Sabarimala Airport may also suffer the same fate as Kannur Airport.
A former airport director said that instead of investing heavily in setting up new airports, small states like Kerala should ideally have one or two international airports with state-of-the-art facilities and have connection flights to other nearby domestic airports.
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