Chennai’s second airport at Parandur to be built in four phases

Chennai's second airport at Parandur to be built in four phases with a capacity of 100 million passengers.

With three terminals, the Chennai city’s second airport coming up at Parandur, will be built in four phases with a capacity to handle 100 million passengers. The total cost of the entire project will be ₹32,704.92 crore, with ₹10,307.3 crore to be spent to build the passenger terminals. These details have been provided by the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation in the pre-feasibility project report and proposed Terms of Reference (TOR) to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The construction of the first phase will begin in January 2026 and end by December 2028 and following this, the other phases will be subsequently taken up, with the final phase winding up by December 2046.

The airport will have three terminals with a massive capacity — terminal 1 (3,45,758 sqm), terminal 2 (4,76,915 sqm) and terminal 3 (5,05,495 sqm). The cargo terminal and the truck docking area together will be 2,30,500 sq.m. and the Parandur airport will have two parallel runways (4040X45 metres). Spread over 5,368.93 acres, a second airport at Parandur has been proposed as the present airport at Meenambakkam is getting saturated, and cargo volumes have been steadily dropping there.

The proposal for the airport has been facing stiff opposition not only from people whose livelihood will be affected but also from activists as there are serious environmental concerns over building this airport. The site has 26.54 per cent of waterbodies and citing this reason, activists have said that it would not be advisable to construct an airport in this location. Meanwhile, the hydrogeological report is being prepared by TIDCO to take mitigation measures to prevent environmental issues.

Approach roads are to be built to connect the site with Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway. “As part of the project, the government of Tamil Nadu has conceived a new 6-lane Airport Link Road to establish a seamless connection between the airport and the existing Bengaluru-Chennai NH-48. This link road is expected to originate at the proposed Airport Expressway (NE-7) drop junction (near the project site) and intersect the existing NH-48 near Attuputhur. The alignment of the Link Road is yet to be finalised,” the report states.

Earlier, the State government had announced Chennai Metro Rail connectivity to Parandur as an extension to the phase II project.

Sources in the Tamil Nadu government said that this was but an initiation process and there are quite a lot of procedures to be completed before the project takes off in a full-fledged way.