Airports in Andhra Pradesh have registered 16 percent growth in passenger traffic this year, it was announced on Wednesday.
The airports handled 17.42 lakh passengers in April-August this year, against 15.05 lakh during the same period last year, it was revealed at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu here on Wednesday to review infrastructure.
According to a statement from the Chief Minister’s office, the air connectivity will further improve in coming months with the introduction of more flights.
From October, non-stop Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) flights will commence from Visakhapatnam to Jagdalpur and from Kadapa to Vijayawada.
Under RCS, Kadapa is connected to Hyderabad and will be connected to Vijayawada by TruJet and Chennai by TruJet and Air Odisha. Visakhapatnam will be connected to Jagdalpur by Air Odisha.
Zoom Air has proposed operations on Delhi, Pune, Vijayawada, Mumbai, Surat routes from October. The government is currently pursuing the slot at Mumbai airport for Zoom Air and SpiceJet, it said.
International operations will be launched at Tirupati and Vijayawada and for this the approvals for the customs and immigration have been received. The airlines will be finalised soon.
The Chief Minister suggested that an airport near Anantapur will be a good idea as it will provide good connectivity to Amaravati and Bengaluru.
The ports traffic in all the state witnessed an overall growth of 8 per cent.
The meeting was also informed that that the tenders for the Natural Gas pipeline from Kakinada to Visakhapatnam for 180 km were received from four qualified bidders. The laying of the pipeline will commence next month, and will be completed by December 2018.
Officials said 12 waste-to-energy plants with a total capacity of 70 MW were commissioned.
The Chief Minister also reviewed the progress on the logistics and energy universities in Kakinada and Anantapur respectively.
It was also decided that AP State Fibernet Limited will commence functioning next month. The target of one lakh AIPTV boxes will be achieved by the month-end. More than 51,000 boxes had already arrived.
SpaceAce Architects, Planners and Designers presented their proposal for Science City in Tirupati. They proposed seven museums, representing the seven hills and paying a tribute to seven of the best architects in the world.
The seven museums will be: Museum of Arts & Science, Museum of Air, Space & Defence, Children’s Museum, Media Museum, Museum of Transport, Museum of Human Evolution & Anthropology and Indoor Rainforest & Museum of Biodiversity.
