Kannur airport, the fourth international airport in Kerala, is set to take wings by the second quarter of 2016.

“We hope the airport will be functional by April 2016,” G. Chandramouli, Managing Director of the Kannur International Airport Ltd (KIAL) told Business Line . “The first trial flight will take off in mid-December 2015.”

Work on the State government-promoted airport, hailed as the largest infrastructural initiative in the North Malabar region of State, has already begun. Located at Mattannur, some 25 km from Kannur, the airport aims to serve people in the northern districts of Kerala as well as Coorg and Mysore in Karnataka. It might attract passengers from Kozhikode and Mangalore airports too.

Conceived in 1998, the airport takes the public-private-participation (PPP) route and is being built in the BOO (build, operate and own) mode. Of the 2,000 acres of land required for the Rs 1,800-crore project, 1,200 acres have been taken possession of. Of this, 800 acres form part of the government’s equity in the project.

“We hope to attain financial closure by the end of this month,” Chandramouli said. “In another ten days, debt components will be finalised.” Central and State public-sector organisations are expected to have 23 per cent equity participation. A couple of agencies and nationalised banks had offered to take care of the rest of the cost. The KIAL authorities had explored funding possibilities from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Asian Development Bank, but these agencies were not interested in funding an airport.

Clearances obtained Chandramouli said the project had obtained all required government clearances. A Rs 694-crore work contract for constructing the airfield had been awarded to L&T. “Our biggest advantage is that since the project is promoted by the government we get full support from it,” Chandramouli said. “Normally, for such a project land acquisition is the biggest hurdle, but in the Kannur airport’s case the government did the acquisition as part of its equity participation.”

He said there was excellent backing from the local people and politicians as they were keen to have the airport. According to estimates, the airport would get initially 14 lakh international passengers and over three lakh domestic passengers, Chandramouli said. International passengers would mostly be the non-resident Keralites working in the Gulf countries as well as tourists from the Far-East. He is confident that the airport will break even by 2020. The State government had offered Rs 130 cores for cash-flow needs for the first five years. “If everything goes as planned, we will start flying in two years,” he said.

basheer.kpm@thehindu.co.in

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