Airport-Oriented Development Booming in India
The 2025 opening of Noida International Airport is stimulating vast amounts of construction.
Photo by Neelam Mathews for ENR
India is in the midst of an aviation-fueled infrastructure boom, with 43 new airports to be added by 2025 and 200 more planned over the next 20 years. Signifying the government’s focus on air transportation to cities, towns, regional and remote locations in India, Prime Minister Narender Modi inaugurated ten smaller airports and new terminals valued at over $742 million in late October.
Global investment in construction is getting a boost in the area around Delhi’s second international airport. Noida International Airport (NIAL) will start operations of its first phase in April 2025. Swiss airport operator Flughafen Zurich signed a concession agreement with the Uttar Pradesh state government for the construction and management of NIAL in 2020, outbidding competitors Adani Enterprises, DIAL and Anchorage Infra (Fairfax). The owner NIAL is a 100% subsidiary of Zürich Airport Ltd. The land acquisition for the airport has been funded by the state government and Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA).
NIAL is 74 km from the current Delhi International Airport.
"The timing is right to support higher borrowing," said an analyst at S&P Global Ratings in May in a webinar. "Rising passenger air traffic, relatively cheaper domestic financing rates, and conducive government policies on foreign ownership should boost funding prospects for the sector.” S&P expects $24 billion will be needed to build new airports and expand existing ones.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) state owns Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YIEDA), which is developing a 25,000-hectare area along the 165-km, six-lane Yamuna Expressway from Delhi to Agra. YIEDA has a big stake in NIAL given that it will be the hub for cargo to service industrial demand and visitors to the state. YEIDA will develop 2,689 sq km in two phases close to NIAL, including a greenfield city.
YIEDA has given an ‘in principle’ approval to U.S.-based consultancy Blue Sky Vantage to develop a $4-billion "American City” on 1,200 acres over the next six years. Investors include top U.S. universities and politicians.
YEIDA also plans a "Korean City" on 365 hectares and a "Japanese City" on 395 hectares, both located within 10 km of NIAL. Last year, Japanese companies expressed interest in investment after assessing the location and conducting soil testing. Planned electronic hubs will include companies manufacturing chips, semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) equipment and cameras.
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APCO Infratech is presently constructing a 30-km link to connect NIAL with the 1,350-km, six-lane Delhi Mumbai Expressway, divided into four sections with a total of 52 packages. The airport will also connect to a new metro line as part of the 886-km Delhi-Varanasi bullet train project.
In January, a consortium led by Bayview Projects and Bhutani Infra was awarded a contract and 1,000 acres of land by YIEDA to develop the Noida International Film City. The first phase of the project will be built on 230 acres. The company will develop the film city in a design, build, finance, operate and transfer contract.
YEIDA and NIAL chief executive officer Arun Vir Singh said in a statement that construction of the Film City is scheduled to begin within the next four to six months, with film-related activities expected to start within three years. Ashish Bhutani, CEO of Bhutani Infrastructure, told the PTI news agency that the first 230-acre phase would need a minimum investment of $180 million.
YEIDA also announced plans to develop yet another new city near NIAL. The ambitious project will involve acquiring over 6,000 hectares for residential, commercial, and industrial development.
“Our location is golden, being in the heart of the industrial belly of the region,” says NIAL COO Kiran Jain Chief. “We have incorporated into our design decongestion of exit and entry points of the cargo terminal to soon start handling 100000 tons of cargo.”
The public-private partnership project is expected to create capacity for 12 million passengers with a 90,000-sq-m terminal building, a 4150-m runway, a parallel taxiway, a cargo facility, and metro and high-speed rail stations. The runway is complete.
Phase 2, a mirror development of Phase 1, will include another terminal, runway and parallel taxiway. Phase 4 to be spread across 4,752 hectares, will expand passenger capacity to 70 million.
After a seven-month delay, construction is in an advanced stage with the airport planning to start commercial flights in April 2025, says Christoph Schnellmann CEO of NIAL. “We won the bid prior to the pandemic in 2020, facing many challenges during that time including high fuel and commodity prices.”
Schnellmann adds that a major challenge has been obtaining the structural steel that will support the roof. In January, crews placed 1800 cu m of concrete over 350 tons of steel in 20 hours.
The terminals are being built in a modular fashion. Prefabricated structures being in short supply, workers are building structures on site. Though NIAL has 10,000 people working on site, officials say skilled human resources, along with flooding management, remain challenges.
Nevertheless, an air traffic control tower is now under testing, with validation flights for arrival and departure procedures to be completed in December. “It's the most important part of our evolutionary journey,” says Schnellmann.
