Bengaluru's second airport: a minefield of regulation, location, competition, politics & obfuscation
India's air transport sector is expanding faster than anywhere else on Earth, and the government is struggling to keep up with demand in the air and on the ground.
The government intends to increase the number of airports from 149 to 200, and some of the new developments will be in large cities - as second facilities - while others will target smaller ones that have no commercial airport yet.
Bengaluru (Bangalore) is India's third biggest city, and along with Delhi and Mumbai (where new airports will open in the next 12 months) and other major cities like Chennai, planning for a second airport began some time ago, in this case to supplement the Kempegowda airport, with its 'BLR' IATA code.
But there are several competing and overlapping issues there, such as a proximity clause requiring any new airport to be at least 150km distant (a long way), until 2032, when it expires.
There is already an existing airport - HAL - which was the city's primary one but which no longer offers significant commercial services, and would not come into contention anyway, despite retaining its features.
Then there is a new airport which is already being built nearby, and which appears to have been overlooked altogether while the neighbouring state wants to build a new airport as well, one that is sufficiently close to Bengaluru that it could steal high-value traffic simply by being in the right place.
There is a suspicion that joined-up thinking has gone AWOL, and on top of that there are at least seven potential sites under consideration, with all the attendant land acquisition and compensation procedures that go with it.
At least the state's planners have time on their side, and there is no pressing need, given that Kempegowda has been expanded.
But as a new airport could open in 2033, nine years on, some progress needs to be made on site selection at least, because the wheels of bureaucracy will turn until the tyres are bald and burned.