Vijayawada Airport at Gannavaram will have its new terminal building ready by the end of December. Simplex Infrastructures Limited is executing the project from October 2015 and was to be completed by January but the company is ensuring that the terminal will be complete one month ahead of the schedule.
The new terminal Building is costing 135 crore will have 1,300 sq mts of plinth area and can accommodate 500 people during peak time. It is taken up to meet the increased demand of air traffic and passenger footfalls since the state bifurcation. The first six months of the current fiscal when compared to the same time last year, there has been 72 percent growth in passenger traffic and 78 percent growth in aircraft movement.
At present five airline operators are operating in the airport and two more airline operators are on the cards to start their operations in the next few months. The state government is in talks with airline operators to increase the air connectivity between Vijayawada-Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada -Hyderabad, Vijayawada-Tirupati, Vijayawada-Kadapa as well as make the transport affordable.
