This is what you could see from new terminal

CHENNAI: Fast forward to 2025: A domestic passenger who walks into the giant steel and glass integrated terminal will be taken by a shuttle bus through a 1.6km-long tunnel under the main runway and taxiways to a satellite terminal that will sit facing the two runways on the western end of the airport campus. And the wait for the boarding call message to flash on the mobile phone will not be tiresome as passengers will be able to enjoy a bird’s eye view of the airfield complete with flights landing and taking off simultaneously from the main runway and the second runway.

Airports Authority of India (AAI), based on the current studies, has decided to locate the new satellite terminal in the space between the main runway and the second runway. When commissioned, Chennai airport will be the only airport in the country with a tunnel running underneath the runway and taxiways to take passengers to a satellite terminal.


An official said the tunnel would begin from the domestic terminal which is being used now. AAI will take up work to prepare the spot where the tunnel will merge with the terminal under the phase 2 modernisation of the airport. “The interface work will be taken up under phase 2. The direction of the tunnel will be decided later based on the soil condition and after finding out how long it will take to build it under the runway. But the tunnel will have to be routed under the main runway,” he added.

The existing airport terminal’s capacity will be saturated by 2024. There is space only to build an integrated terminal on the GST Road side. The satellite terminal is expected to cost Rs 500 crore as per the current estimate and work is expected to start in three years.

Planning, designing, and other formalities will be taken up in the next two years. The project, mooted more than five years ago, received clearance from the environment ministry in 2016 after which AAI took up a feasibility study. As part of the study, AAI approached the Chennai metro rail and asked it to look into the project’s feasibility. Metro rail approved it but will do more checks on the technicalities of building a tunnel.

An AAI official said the satellite terminal would be needed because the second airport would take more time to materialise as land was yet to be identified. “This is the next level of development we are looking at for the airport to handle passenger growth after building the integrated terminal on the location of old domestic and international terminals. But ground work is being started now so that there would not be a delay in construction of the satellite terminal if the second airport is going to be delayed for a long time,” he added.