Finally the Bangalore Airport is opened 6 months after opening of Shamshabad International Airport [Shamshabad Route] after huge protests from the city residents and court cases. This new Devanahalli international airport is around 31 kms from the city limits and this is the main problem for the city residents to travel towards the city because the first problem would be to cross the high traffic city and then again travelling the under construction 31kms route towards the new airport which comes almost in the center of the bangalore and mysore city.
You need to make sure that if you are visiting this airport you know the kannada language because the route is on the outskirts of the city limits and you may not find everyone who would speak in English/ Hindi. The old HAL Airport which is completely closed now was congested because of the increasing number of air passengers and cheaper fares. Currently the route towards the Airport is build on the theme of a 6-lane carriage way in order to make sure the traffic can be maintained but since its currently in construction the passengers can expect lot of problems. The cities IT area ‘Electronic City’ where most techies stay are claiming that they would have to travel for around 3 hours in order to reach the Airport because of the distance and high traffic during peak hours.
The main problem claimed by BIAL is the closing of HAL Airport, but it seems thats not real because even in international locations the Airports are located on a range of 40-70kms from the city limits and excellent highway roads and express roadways are used to connect to the airports in order to make sure that the passengers reach the airports in the shortest time. The main problem in the Bangalore airport is the connectivity route which is under construction and this make the distance look huge when compared to the HAL Airport. The New Bengaluru International Airport is claimed to handle 12 million passengers every year when compared to the HAL’s capacity of just 2.5 million passengers which was later expanded to around 10 million passengers.
The New Airport has a total capacity of 42 parking bays and 8 Aerobridges in order to handle around 700 aircrafts movements every day. The new airport was build in a record time of just 36months with a public-private partnership till 2012 which consists of Unique Zurich Airport, Siemens Project Ventures and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) as private promoters, while Airport Authority of India (AAI) and Karnataka government as state-owned promoters.
Have you been to this new Airport? How was your experiance with? Do send me some photographs of this new airport snapped using your own camera or mobile phones.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Yahoo… i stay in bangalore and haven’t been their
But it is great to hear record time of just 36months
June 12th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Yes, I have been to the new international airport. From Hebbal Flyover, though the distance is 23 kms. it takes only 45-45 minutes because of the very good roads. From my house in Hebbal the HAL airport was only 17 kms.away but it used to take 90 minutes to reach. The problem is not with the BIAL airport location but with Bangalore traffic and the uncultured drivers who lack traffic sense.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Hi,
Just had been to bangalore and well there are certainly some things which have amazed me.
1. Bangalore airport(the new one) is probably far far more criticised than it actually deserves. I havent seen the hyderabad airport, so I wont comment on that., but in whatever I have seen in India(delhi, mumbai, chennai, kolkata, pune) this is by far the best one and the others dont even come close….(bear that I am not counting Hyderabad.)
2. The checkout was easy and there were not too many hassles . I came out to be greeted by an large louis vitton breif case giving me an indiaction, the kind of hotspot this airport is to become.
3. The one thing amazing is the bus service outside. There are buses to almost every aea in bangalore and that too frequently. But the down point is the price at Rs.150. (Read an news item that the state government is planning a hitech rail link to the airport which covers in 25 minutes from the city centre…That should solve this problem)
4.The downside was the airport building design. It surely is posche but they certainly could have come up with better designs.(I have been to airports in UK, geneva, zurich and the US to actually have an idea of what is posche and make an comment on this)
5. And finally the approach roads.. Well.. Havent seen better in India atleast and someone in the bus proclaimed that the approch roads were better than the ones in hyderabad.
Some must be wondering of so many praises to the airport but these are only to let the people know that the criticism on this airport in various blogs I have seen had made me actually fear going there. But this came out as a pleasant surprise.
In one of the blogs , some one had said that the arrival and departure were on the round floor and that was pathetic. Well that was a lie trying to mislead people. The departure on the first floor is state of the art and certainly I had no problems.
There was an other critic who said that the first floor looked like a shopping mall. well have they been to any international airport before actually making a comment and is that really a pointto criticise…. It had some great international brands and was certainly of international standards..
To be very honest(I am) , I had a great experience with the BIAL ..
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July 15th, 2008 at 11:31 am
lot of factual errors in airport review. shamshabad airport opened in may 08 and devanahalli in Jun 08. not six months apart.the airport is in between bangalore and mysore city? The NH-7 leading to hyderabad is very well sign posted throughout especially after Hebbal. Language shouldn’t be an issue at all. I haven’t been inside the airport though, i have driven past it I would go with what Mr Raghu says.