HIAL is a joint venture company promoted by GMR Group (63 per cent), Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad (11 per cent), Government of Andhra Pradesh (13 per cent) and Airports Authority of India (13 per cent) to develop the new airport. Responding to queries of newspersons after the ceremony of first concrete pour for the Passenger Terminal Building (PTB) on Monday, he said the entire airport project is expected to be completed in 27 months from the date of issue of notice to proceed to contractors given on September 1. While the entire project would be ready by December 2007, trials would be conducted for three months so that the airport would take off by March 2008, he said.

The contract for the PTB works was awarded to the China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) Ltd after selection through an international competitive bidding process. The contract, worth Rs 615 crore, is for fully operational terminal building area of over one-lakh square metres. The airside and landside (ALS) works contract, worth Rs 495-crore, was awarded to the Larsen & Toubro Ltd

According to Mr. Grandhi, HIAL has adopted a strategy for allowing incremental expansion of the facilities without major rebuilding of existing areas at the airport. The strategy is aimed at maintaining the flexibility to meet future traffic levels.

The capacity is accordingly increased for the first phase to 7-million passengers per year from the originally envisaged level of 5-million passengers.

According to the GMR Group Head-Project Management, Mr. Bruce Benjamin, HIAL is working for the completion of all the facilities before the end of 2007 and would conduct trial and certification of the facilities for the next three months.

He said the international airport would be much bigger in capacity compared to the one coming up at Bangalore and would have runways to accommodate the A-380 aircraft.