The much-awaited Bengaluru International Airport finally opened late on Friday to commercial operations, with an Air India Airbus A320 (IC 609) from Mumbai being the first to land at 22.37 pm, carrying about 110 passengers and crew.The same aircraft took off as IC 957 to Singapore 15 minutes into Saturday (00:15 IST), with 80 per cent of its capacity (144 seats) filled. Captain Ishwar Pal and co-pilot Gourav Jaggi were behind the controls of the Airbus to cruise for 210 minutes and land at Singapore by 06:15 local time.
The Rs 25-billion ($625 million) greenfield airport is situated at Devanahalli, about 40 km from India's IT hub. It is surrounded by greenery and farmlands, with the historic Nandi Hills forming the backdrop. The airport inauguration was delayed three times before it finally became operational.There were several protests against the privately built airport because of its distance - about 35 kms from the city centre, at the end of a road that already routinely gets jammed with traffic.
The new airport has been built in record 36 months under public-private partnership to handle about 10-12 million passengers per annum till 2012. The consortium 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.
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