Civil aviation minister Praful Patel has directed Bangalore International Airport Limited, the Siemens-led private consortium developing the new greenfield airport, to increase its capacity to handle passengers.

According to sources in the civil aviation ministry, the current passenger handling capacity of the Bangalore airport is 11 million per annum.

Ferrying more

• The passenger handling capacity of the Bangalore airport is 11 million per year
• BIAL has been told to create a second terminal, which will be an exact replica of the existing terminal
• Till that is not completed, BIAL will make arrangements to increase its capacity in the next eight months

Sources in the civil aviation ministry said that BIAL has been told to create a second terminal which will be an exact replica of the existing terminal within the next three years. This would more than double the capacity of the airport.

Till that terminal is not completed, BIAL has been asked to make arrangements to increase its capacity in the next eight months. Sources in the ministry said that Patel was "not happy with the new airport"

BIAL's projected traffic of 10.1 million passengers by 2010 was achieved in 2007-08 itself and the airport has been seeing a 25 per cent growth over the past couple of years.

BIAL executives were not available for comment. BIAL is a consortium of  Siemens-Zurich Airport, L&T, Airports Authority of India and Karnataka State Investment and Industrial Development Corporation. The airport has been functional from May 24 this year.

The Bangalore airport currently has one terminal for both international and domestic operations. The terminal works as a swing area which provides flexibility for both domestic and international operations as per the peak hour.

The departure area, for instance, is divided into three areas. Two-thirds of that area is used for domestic operations, while one part is used for international during the daytime. During the night when there are more international flights, two-thirds is used for international operations and the rest for domestic operations.

Bangalore airport has 53 common use check-in counters which allow more than one airline to use it at different hours. It has 18 self check-in counters.

The airport has 4000 acres of land at its disposal which would allow it to enhance the infrastructure to increase passenger handling capacity to 40 million passengers a year.