No parking space: City airport loses out

CHENNAI: Chennai may get more flights to smaller towns thanks to the ministry of civil aviation's plan to push its regional connectivity scheme but passengers may not get early morning schedules as there is no space to park planes overnight.The airport will miss out in capitalising on regional connectivity as space constraints prevent it from alloting parking bays and peak hour slots for flights.
Airlines will be basing their operations out of Hyderabad or Bengaluru, the airports that offer better parking bays. The flights will land in Chennai in the morning to connect smaller towns under the Udan scheme. In the case of Chennai-Mysuru flight, that was launched on Wednesday , the Trujet flight arrives from Hyderabad as a HyderabadChennai service and then flies to Mysuru at 5.40pm.
As night parking was a problem, Airports Authority of India (AAI) created some remote parking bays in the space between the main runway and the second runway . However, most airlines do not prefer to use these bays because it is a hassle to bring the planes from the bays to the terminal for departure. The planes that are parked here have to wait to cross the main runway to taxi to the terminal or ba ay closer to the terminal so that passengers can board.
V Umesh, managing director of Trujet, which has bagged 18 routes, said, “It is very difficult to get slots at Chennai airport. It is not easy to get the planes from the remote bays. We have requested for parking bays.“
A senior AAI official said, “Night parking can be provided only at remote parking bays.Airlines have requested for space but we can only provide that if we can use some space meant for hangar.“
He also said the airport would be able to provide more parking bays only when phase 2 expansion is taken up during which the old airport building in Meenambakkam will be demolished and a taxiway will be straightened. Airlines too want slots at the same time during peak hours. It was because of this hassle that AirAsia India moved its operations to Bengaluru though it wanted Chennai to a hub.