Chapter 1 Relocation

A few years ago, Rohit Tomar left his cushy job with a Vietnam-based airline and founded a consultancy with his wife Veena. Tomar picked Mumbai, his city of birth and one of India’s primary aviation hubs, for the headquarters of his firm Caladrius Aero. However, this March, the Tomars decided to shift to Greater Noida in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR). “Delhi-NCR has more opportunities in aviation. Most of the country’s major airlines are now based here. With the completion of the upcoming airport in Jewar, the region will have two international airports within two hours of each other. Also, a lot of work in the development of a drone industry is happening, especially in Noida and its surrounding areas, due to the push being given to it by the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government,” he tells Business Today. Tomar is not alone—he can count at least five other people in his professional circle who have shifted from metros like Mumbai and Bengaluru to Delhi-NCR in the past two years.

To Tomar’s point, India’s largest airline IndiGo is based out of Gurugram, which also houses the headquarters of Jet Airways (originally founded in Mumbai). After buying Air India, the Tata group is looking to synergise its aviation assets—AirAsia India, Vistara, Air India Express and Air India SATS, the ground handling supplier—under one roof in Gurugram.

The layout plan of the Noida International Airport

Clearly, Delhi-NCR is fast turning into a powerful aviation hub. The commencement of work on the much-delayed Noida International Airport (NIA) at Jewar, UP, is expected to cement this trend. “All aviation majors, including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), airlines, training facilities, warehousing and logistics firms, and aviation insurance firms, have their presence here. It will be the next aviation capital of India,” predicts Pulak Sen, Founder Secretary General, MRO Association of India, and a long-time Mumbai resident who shifted to Ghaziabad in Delhi-NCR a few years ago. “NIA has been designed keeping in mind future expansion. Once the project comes up, activities such as warehousing and logistics, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), and others will develop around it. As the airport has been planned in recent times and occupies a large land parcel, it will take a very long time to get saturated,” says Sen.

On completion by the last quarter of 2024, NIA will become one of the largest aviation hubs in the Asia-Pacific. With 12 entry points, the 400,000-sq. m passenger terminal can handle 12 million passengers annually, which can be expanded to handle 30 million passengers.  A second terminal, once constructed, will take that capacity to 70 million. Currently, India’s biggest airport, the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, has a capacity to handle 60 million passengers annually. NIA will also be India’s first net-zero emissions airport.

Land acquisition for the first phase is largely completed. “Nothing will derail the construction progress. We’ve completed about 70 per cent of the boundary wall. We’re working hand-in-hand with the UP government, and we continue to make steady progress,” says Christoph Schnellmann, CEO of the project’s concessionaire, Yamuna International Airport Pvt. Ltd (YIAPL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Flughafen Zürich. YIAPL has selected Tata Projects as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the project. It will construct the terminal, runway, airside infrastructure, landside facilities and other ancillary buildings at the site.

Nothing will derail the construction progress. We’ve completed about 70 per cent of the boundary wall. We’re working hand-in-hand with the UP government, and we continue to make steady progress.

Christoph Schnellmann
CEO
Yamuna International Airport Pvt. Ltd (YIAPL).

Chapter 2 The Beginnings

Jewar, about 87 km from the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in Delhi, was once amongst the most backward regions of UP. Metalled roads were largely absent and one had to drive through Faridabad in neighbouring Haryana to reach villages in the area. Villagers recall how, 30 years ago, they had to wake up at 4 am and spend up to four hours to reach work in Delhi. Today, it takes less than an hour on the six-lane Yamuna Expressway.

Like India’s unpaved village roads, the road to the airport was filled with obstacles. The project was cleared in 2003 by the then NDA government as Taj International and Aviation Hub, and was expected to be completed by 2007-08. The plan was shelved with the change of guard at the centre after the GMR Group claimed that a second airport in the NCR would adversely impact traffic and revenues at IGIA, which it operated. In 2010, the Bahujan Samaj Party government in UP tried to revive the project. The villagers’ agitation that followed the state government’s drive to acquire land along the Yamuna Expressway according to a British-era law ultimately resulted in the central government enacting the Land Acquisition Act of 2013. The law seeks to pay the affected a compensation of four times the market value of their land in a rural area, and two times in an urban area.

One person who played a key role in reviving the project was Dr Mahesh Kumar Sharma, the BJP lawmaker from Noida, as the Union minister of state for civil aviation (2014-2016). “During a discussion with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, I submitted to him that if cities like New York and Washington DC could have three airports each, why couldn’t the Delhi-NCR have one more airport?” reminisces Sharma, a qualified physician. Besides Jewar, sites in Bhiwadi (Rajasthan), Rohtak (Haryana) and Agra (UP) were also considered. “After all the feasibility studies were completed, I managed to convince Akhilesh Yadav (then UP chief minister) that an airport in Jewar wouldn’t only be more viable, but also a win-win proposition for both the state and centre,” he says.

In 2018, the Noida International Airport Co. Ltd was formed to handle aspects like bidding and project management. The state administration then explained the benefits of the project to farmers, who were reluctant to hand over their land. “I told them that it was with great difficulty and after a very long wait that our area would have a transformative infrastructure project. Once the farmers were convinced of the developments that the project would lead to, they came on board,” says Dhirendra Singh, the MLA from Jewar.

During a discussion with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, I submitted to him that if cities like New York and Washington DC could have three airports each, why couldn’t the Delhi-NCR have one more airport?

Dr Mahesh Kumar Sharma,
MP,
Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh

So it was that on November 25, 2021, the PM laid the foundation stone for the project in a public ceremony that attracted thousands of excited villagers, especially women, who turned up in hordes, singing popular folk songs. “NIA will help drive economic growth and job creation in the region. The airport partners will directly employ 4,000-5,000 men and women from the region. The project will also help create thousands of job opportunities indirectly,” says Schnellmann. Already, the project partners are examining ways of offering work to locals during the construction phase.

Chapter 3 Aerotropolis

A new concept in urban planning, an aerotropolis is a city whose infrastructure, land use and economy are centred around an airport, which provides fast connectivity to different parts of the world. In the age of Industry 4.0, an aerotropolis will prove to be a disruptor. “The biggest disruption could be in the use of technology in design, operation and data management, which could influence consumer behaviour and customer experience for passengers, airlines or service providers, and redefine cost and efficiency of operations for aero or non-aero businesses,” says an aviation expert requesting anonymity.