The Goan: Why doesthe Ammann & Whitney’s Draft Master Plan look like a real estate one ratherthan an Airport one?
Anand Sherkhane: Howdo you say that?
TG: So manyresidential areas, convention centres.
AS: Who has toldyou all this. An airport cannot be a real estate plan. For any infrastructureproject, people think that a private operator will invest his money and build.The Govt does not have 3000-3500 crores for this project. Any private playerinvesting such money would need to make commercial gains. The terminal buildinghas all the commercial area inbuilt. We have not frozen any commercial plan or talkedabout any hotels.
TG: But it is commonknowledge that the Air Traffic Projections came from ICAO. How come you arerelying on A&W’s projections?
AS: ICAO Report2007 is our base report. But the world has moved on. Air Passenger Traffic has grown by 20%+. Goahas witnessed maximum growth across the country. Keeping that in mind, it wasimportant that we looked at the projections independently. A&W gave ustraffic projections in a phased manner.
TG: Why is the MasterPlan not made public?
AS: It will comeout at the right time. We have acquired over 1200 acres of land. Acquisitionwill happen in the next three months which will be initiated after the HighCourt decision. By that time even the documentation will be ready.
TG: There are forestson the slopes. This place is very near to Mhadei Tiger Sancturay and very nearto WGEEP Report.
AS: This placedoes not have many forests. Look at Google Map barring the gorge which has someforests. It is plain barren land.
TG: ICAO Report talksof a projection of Mopa that Dabolim crossed two years ago. Even Dabolim isenhancing capacity by four times. How then do you justify building of Mopa as asecond best option?
AS: See the mainreason hampering Dabolim today are the time slots. The airport is under thecontrol of the navy and they have restricted flying / landing hours.
TG: But timings arerestricted to specific hours between 8 am to 1 pm, the airport with its allweather, night landing facility is open 24x7 for any other traffic.
AS: Are theyallowing aircrafts to land? I think CM is the best person to speak. These areafter all policy decisions.
TG: So we can assumesafely that the projections were from A&W
AS: The ICAO isthe base and the A&W built on it. They conducted their own market surveys.A&W come with their own figures which were submitted to the steeringcommittee. The steering committee then asked them to rework the whole figure toensure we had maximum passenger capacity.
