100 days of an airport

The Kingfisher Sports Lounge, with its wine-red interiors, is a stylish little nook inside the new airport. Albert Brunner, CEO of BIAL, chose it as the venue to make a presentation to about a dozen journalists yesterday.

The airport has just completed a hundred days. It can't be easy building an airport and getting it going, and Brunner, by his own admission, has lost a bit of hair trying to do so. He represents the Swiss-led consortium that took up and executed the project. The Indian government holds a stake in the airport.

Among the things that brought the airport a bad press was the lack of adequate toilets. Brunner said the number had increased by 70 per cent, and took us on a tour through the new additions. The toilets are spacious, and have sparkling new sanitaryware. Not many guests had anticipated such a walk through, but then, you never know where journalism can take you.

Our paper has been covering the campaign for the retention of HAL Airport, and we have a story today about a shocking clause in the BIAL concessionaire agreement that seems to question the very sovereignty of India.

Soon after the old airport was closed, we tried to find out whether it was indeed better to drive to Chennai than to take a plane. We sent two reporters, both starting from Koramangala, to Chennai, one by plane and the other by bus.

Savie, who flew, reached a destination in central Chennai just 40 minutes before Sanchita, who took the road. That experiment has settled a debate. If you are travelling to Chennai from southern Bangalore, you would save about Rs 4,500 by just taking a bus. And you wouldn't lose too much time either.

Our reporters have come up with stories that haven't always been sympathetic to BIAL, but that doesn't mean we blame Brunner and his team for all citizens' woes. When the government didn't take up work on the trumpet-shaped flyover that connects the highway to the airport, he took it upon himself to build it, and he completed it in seven months. That should shame officials and contractors in charge of our civic projects.

If you've ever tried to do something on your own that requires a licence or permit, you will have a fair idea of what Brunner must have been up against. Officials think you are fair game if you are an entrepreneur, and harass you to the point of exhaustion. In projects of BIAL's scale, politicians come in at every point and make life hell till their demands are met. One of the complaints against the new airport is that it doesn't have a special lounge for MLAs. BIAL is building one now.

So who is to blame if BIAL ignores local taxi drivers and gets into profitable deals with new cab firms? Whose job is it to ensure connectivity to the new airport? Who carelessly signed away India's sovereignty? Who ought to have got MSIL to gear up to handle cargo at the new airport? Who ignored the problems of short haul passengers? The answer to these questions isn’t BIAL, but people who represented us. Had they insisted on safeguarding citizens' interests, everyone would have been happier.

Luxury stores inside the airport are offering discounts. The revenue for BIAL in the last three months hasn’t been up to its board’s expectations. The global economy is slowing down. Airlines are bleeding. But Brunner is upbeat, and hopes to have a second express terminal ready by July 2009.

Hundred days is a landmark, even if it is a minor one. Let us congratulate BIAL,
and wish them luck.