Though the long-pending Navi Mumbai International Airport is finally inching closer to seeing the light of the day, the Greenfield airport project in Pune, which too has been much delayed, continues to be in limbo.
“The original site was finalised in Chakan in 2008, but it was met with opposition from farmers. Then, we looked at Khed (Rajgurunagar), but this site too faced problems, with more than half the land required coming under a special economic zone,” the official said. “The government has to take a call on the site... it has to go back to Chakan or look at a new site.”
He added that the airport needed to come up in proximity to the Chakan-Khed-Talegaon belt where a large number of industries were located.
The airport at Lohegaon in Pune is an Indian Air Force facility which imposes restrictions on civilian activities.
The official noted that looking at other areas in the district, like the Pune-Solapur stretch, would not be logistically feasible because of the time it would take for people to commute to the airport, a problem compounded by lack of public transport options in Pune. “It will make more sense for people to travel to Panvel via the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and catch a flight,” he added.
“This is at a very initial stage… the government is serious about the international airport in Pune,” said Pune district collector Sourabh Rao, adding that some other sites apart from Chakan and Khed were being considered.
The state government is on the verge of coming out with its first aviation policy to boost connectivity between smaller, non-metro towns and provide an impetus to the economy.
Though Maharashtra has among the highest number of airports and airstrips in India, it has commercial operations from just four airports — Mumbai, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Nagpur — compared to Gujarat’s 10.
The state has 28 airports and airstrips, of which four are under construction or proposed, two are private and one is not in use. It also has four Greenfield airports under execution or under construction, including Navi Mumbai, Pune, Parule Chipi in Sindhudurg and Shirdi.
The policy will try to operationalise the remaining 21 airports and airstrips, barring one closed airstrip at Phaltan. Presently, these smaller airports lack scheduled flights and cater to only smaller aircraft.
Recently, state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar had spoken about plans to hike regional air connectivity and said that in the first phase the state will increase the length of landing strips which are less than 1,500 meters to allow larger aircraft to ply on them.
He added that they would also push for flights on routes connecting smaller cities with each other and bigger cities Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad.
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