Mandakalli Airport

I just read this news report about Mandakalli Airport in Mysooru (yes that's what I am going to spell it from now on if I can remember it). I am all for getting an airport. My brother and I used to go to Chamarajanagara in the summers when we were very young to spend time with my aunt. The route takes one past the airport, and I remember one year seeing an airplane parked there. It was a Dornier from the short lived Vayudooth service that ferried passengers to Bengalooru. Since it stopped, I have been aware of this issue coming up in the local media with studies on how many seats the city can fill and to which destinations.

So this is a good development. What I don't understand however is why the airport project took more importance just because of the IT industry. The story quotes some numbers on the exports of the IT industry, but surely tourism (including the yoga tourists) brings a lot more to the city? And it has for far longer than IT has?

Maybe I am touchy about this, but I don't want IT to be associated with Mysooru the way it is with Bengalooru. Whatever made Bengalooru, it is lost in the din of IT. It is a good thing that infrastructure is developed under whatever pretext. But it is extremely misleading to outsiders, and damaging to the image of a city that there is nothing else important enough about it that warrants an air service other than IT.

Also, why should it take so long for the airport work to complete? December 2008? Excuse me, but as someone who knows about airports a little more than the average person, I don't think there is any reason why paving two runways and associated taxiways, ramps and aprons should take two years. Contrary to popular perception, there is nothing special about building an airport. The runways are just heavy duty roads. Granted that land acquisition is an issue, but in Mandakalli the majority of the land is already there. The terminal building is just another building and requires no special engineering. And for the kind of traffic that Mandakalli might see, there is no need for a control tower or radar. Watsonville Municipal Airport which is near here handles the same amount of aircraft movements in a day as the current Bengalooru International Airport. And it doesn't have a tower.

But when the airport is done, I hope it is not named after Ganapati Sacchidananda.