Why Jewar International Airport will be game changer for Delhi, UP

Just visit the national capital's Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) on any given day and you would see the huge movement of passengers outside and inside the airport. Honestly, it looks like an railway station rather than an international airport due to sea of people either going out of Delhi or visiting here. The crowd there scares you.

Actually, it has become world's second busiest airport. If it is so busy, surely chaos would follow it. A leading global travel data operator, Official Airline Guide (OAG), said that Delhi Airport has emerged as the world's second busiest airport in March 2022, in terms of total seat capacity and frequency of domestic and international flights. The airport handled staggering over 3 crore domestic passengers and more than 5 crore international traffic in CY2021.

Thankfully, after around 12 to 14 months, the brand new airport at Greater Noida would give relief and respite to choking IGI. Of course, the Jewar International Airport, which is also known as Noida International Airport, would give much needed relief to thousands of professionals working for big ticket multi national companies like Adobe Systems India, Denso India, EXL Service Holdings Inc., Global Logic India Pvt. Ltd, India Yamaha Motor India Pvt. Ltd, Panasonic AVP Networks India Co. Ltd, Signify Innovations India Ltd. (Philips Lighting India Ltd.), Rockwell Automation India Ltd, Sharp Business Systems India Ltd, Infogain India Pvt Ltd and others operating from either Noida or Greater Noida. Naturally, their professionals would take their local or international flights from the Jewar international airport once it is operational.

Further, almost all the private TV channels operate from Noida. Thousands of media professionals work there. The new airport would also save their precious time in commuting as many national and international flights would commence from the new airport. They would not have to spend so much time in commuting to IGI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already laid the foundation stone of the Jewar International Airport, in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida. It is close to Delhi. The airport, which is being developed by Yamuna International Airport (YIAPL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of the project's Swiss concessionaire Zurich International Airport AG, will be the only other international airport in the national capital region apart from Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport. Spread over 1,300 hectares, work on the first of four phases is due to be over by 2024. The airport has been conceptualised with an integrated multi-modal cargo hub, the first in the country.

Of course, the new airport, which would be Asia's largest and the world's fourth-largest, will open up new avenues of development and propel Uttar Pradesh to new heights. The Jewar International Airport will be the logistics gateway of north India. The integrated multi-nodal cargo hub will fast track development of the State.

Apart from the airport, maintenance, repair and overhauling (MRO) facility will also be coming up in 40 acres. At present, 85 per cent of maintenance and repair works of aircraft is done overseas, for which Rs 15,000 crore is spent annually. With the new facility, a part of that can be saved.

The Rs 30,000 crore airport project is proposed to be built in four phases. The cost of the first phase is expected to be Rs 5,730 crore and it would cater to over one crore passengers per year. By the end of phase 4, the project would have the capacity to handle 7 crore passengers per year.

The Jewar International Airport will be a multi-modal connectivity hub and will create employment opportunities for more than 1 lakh people. It will host multi-modal connectivity and bring in investments worth Rs 60,000 crore to UP. In terms of location, it is about 72 km from the existing IGI airport in New Delhi, 52 km from Noida, 28 km from Greater Noida,40 km from Ghaziabad and 45 km from Aligarh. The multi-modal logistics hub at Dadri is about 40 km away, whereas the distance to Faridabad is about 40 km and Agra is about 130 km away.

There is no doubt that both Noida and Greater Noida have emerged as great places for setting up IT business. IT sector giants like Tata Consultancy Services(TCS), Accenture, HCL Technologies, EY, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant, Capgemini, PayTm and Google are here in two big NCR cities of Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, hundreds of other small but emerging IT companies also operate from there. It goes without saying that the professionals of these IT companies would prefer to take their flights from Jewar airport.

Well, Uttar Pradesh received an investment of Rs 1,154 crore in Greater Noida by five Korean firms who have acquired land to set up their factories in the Greater Noida. The companies will provide employment to 8,706 youths. These Korean firms - Samkwang India Electronics, KH Vatech India, Cenetech India, Dreamtech and Stereon - have bought 3.51 lakh square metres of land in Greater Noida area.While Samkwang India Electronics is setting up its unit at an estimated cost of Rs 440 crore, which will employ 4,000 people, KH Vatech India is investing Rs.247 crore and Sentech India Rs 34 crore to establish their own unit that will provide employment to 786 and 350 people, respectively. The other two - Dream Tech and Stereon - have acquired land in Sector Ecotech 10 to establish their plants at the cost of Rs 433 crore. Apart from South Korean firms, Chinese smartphone makers Oppo, Vivo and Forme have also invested heavily in Greater Noida in the last four-and-a-half years.

In the year 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korea President Moon Jae-in inaugurated a Samsung Electronics mobile phone manufacturing facility, billed as the world's largest, in Noida. The 35-acre factory would not only generate more jobs but also make India a global export hub.The new plant, built at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore, will help Samsung raise its capacity in a phased manner. The facility will allow Samsung to manufacture phones at a lower cost due to its scale, while other phone making hubs in China, South Korea and Vietnam are getting expensive.

The two leaders travelled on the Delhi Metro to reach the inauguration ceremony, which was also attended by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and senior Samsung officials. Clearly, Noida and Greater Noida are becoming favourite cities of South Korean firms as well. So in nutshell, it can be said that the new airport would prove to be huge blessing for all, including the large National Capital Region based expatriate community, who travel on air on regular basis.

(The author is Delhi-based senior journalist and writer. He is author of Gandhi's Delhi which has brought to the forth many hidden facts about Mahatma Gandhi)