The new international airport at Shamshabad, about 30 km from here, has completed a month of commercial operations.
HYDERABAD: The new international airport at Shamshabad, about 30 km from here, has completed a month of commercial operations.
The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport registered 16 per cent growth in Air Traffic Movements (ATMs) and 13 percent passenger growth over the period between March 23 and April 22.
The airport, which is the country's first Greenfield airport in public-private partnership, commenced operations March 23. The earlier airport was located at Begumpet in the city centre.
During the first month of operations, the airport registered a total of 7789 ATMs - 865 international and 6924 domestic.
The number of passengers handled by the airport during the first month was 626,000 including 94,000 international passengers, said a spokesman of GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL), the public-private joint venture which built the Rs.25 billion airport.
The airport with world-class facilities and the longest run-way in southeast Asia is designed to handle 12 million passengers per annum. The ultimate capacity will be 40 million passengers.
Fuel sales have doubled. "This is due to reduction in tax on ATF from 33 percent to four percent and also due to the Open Access Model existing at the new airport."
GHIAL officials said the new airport was also attracting many global airlines. Gulf Air will be the first new airline to introduce flights to the new airport. The national carrier of Kingdom of Bahrain will commence daily flights to Hyderabad from July 1 with A320 aircraft.
British Airways will launch flights from Heathrow to Hyderabad from October 27. There will be five flights each week on a Boeing 777 aircraft.
"With the blessings of one and all and the sheer hard work and dedication of each one associated with the new airport, we have successfully crossed the one-month milestone," said A. Viswanath, Chief Commercial Officer, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.
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