The upcoming Bangalore international airport may not be A380 compliant but the proposed regional airport at Hassan will be.

The Hassan airport, for which the Jupiter Aviation and Logistics Limited (JAL) has been given the DBOT (design, build, operate, transfer) contract, will house a passenger terminal required for the world’s largest passenger aircraft besides an MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) which can also handle the super jumbo.

One of the main requirements to receive the A380 will be the runway and the Hassan project will have a runway of 60 metres width and shoulders of 7.5 metres on either side. In comparison, the Bangalore international airport at Devanahalli will have a runway width of 45 metres with shoulders of 7.5 metres each.

The Hassan runway will have a  length of 3,600 metres and the Devanahalli airport 4,000 metres. The Bangalore airport will be A380-compliant only when it builds its second runway, by 2010.

‘Only for cargo’
Speaking to Deccan Herald, Karnataka PWD Secretary Sudhir Krishna noted that the Hassan project would be readied for A380 cargo and not for the passenger aircraft (but A380 cargo, left with an empty order book, is unlikely to be rolled out till 2012).

However, the techno-economic feasibility (TEF) report of the airport, which has been submitted to the civil aviation ministry here, says the passenger terminal will have space of one lakh sq ft (capacity of two to four million passengers a year) “which can accommodate passengers of A380”. Industry observers say it is unlikely that the A380 passenger aircraft would come to India before 2011 when Kingfisher Airlines is scheduled to get it.

First A 380 aircraft
The first ever A380 aircraft will be put into operation by Singapore Airlines next month but India is not on its radar.

Meanwhile, though work on the 950-acre project has started, ministry officials say it would take two to four months for the TEF report to be approved. According to the TEF report, the Rs 600-crore greenfield airport will have various aircraft lifecycle support facilities like MRO, inland container depot, flight training institute, IT park, golf course, shopping malls etc. Sudhir Krishna observed that the work on the support facilities would start side by side.

The TEF report says the airport will have a capacity of two million passengers and handle one lakh metric tonnes of cargo by 2015.

It asserts that 33 per cent of cargo and 15 per cent of passengers presently handled by the HAL airport in Bangalore (4.4 million and 1.24 lakh metric tonnes) is generated from Hassan and neighbourhood. JAL has identified Wilbur Smith Associates, USA for airport design and PVK Infrastructure Projects, Bangalore, for construction.