Mangaluru: The Airports Authority of India’s Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) is emerging as one of the fastest growing airports in southern India. MIA has seen a 30% growth of passenger traffic since the last one year.The number passengers handled in this airport has gone up to 23.4 lakh during 2017-18 as against 17.5 lakh in 2016-17. The current number of flight operations per day is more than 60 and is likely to cross 80 in the coming months.Vasamsetti Venkateswara Rao, airport director, MIA told TOI that AAI has already taken up major expansion of terminal building to help cope with the projected increase in flight movements that will also see a resultant increase in passenger traffic. “We are enhancing area of terminal building by 1.5 times of its existing area in the coming years,” Rao said, adding these works are in advanced tender stage and will be awarded shortly with an estimated execution time of 18 months.The parallel taxi track phase-I commissioning has increased runway handling capacity from 10 flights per hour to 14 flights per hour, Rao said, adding with the commissioning of parallel taxi track phase-II, the runway handling capacity will further increase to 17 flights per hour and this will add to the enhanced aircraft movement. AAI has also undertaken major safety enhancement projects by increasing the width of runway side basic strip from 75 metres to 150 metres.While two passenger boarding bridges are being added in the coming months, two more passenger boarding bridges will be built along with the (terminal) expansion project, Rao said. MIA is going to further add three more parking bays for aircraft, which will aid the projected rise in traffic movement and passenger growth. New enhanced facilities like airport surveillance and monopulse secondary surveillance radars and DVOR have been installed and commissioned.In the last year, many new passenger friendly facilities have been introduced in MIA such as tag-less baggage clearance, silent airport, sanitary napkin vending machines in women’s restroom, re-furnished child care room with baby cradle and prams, Rao said.Besides, passengers are being welcomed in the terminal with the famous Mangaluru jasmine fragrance through automatic dispenser machines installed in various locations in the terminal, Rao said.

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