Mumbai, Feb 12 (IANS) Two new showpiece infrastructure projects – the Terminal 2 at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) and the Sahar Elevated Access Road – opened here Wednesday.
An Air India flight from Singapore AI-343 which landed at T-2 post noon was greeted with the traditional water cannon salute amid cheers.
All the passengers were welcomed with tilak, a rose bud and a goodie bag as Maharashtrian music played in the background.
All the passengers of an outbound Jet Airways flight — scheduled to depart at 1.20 p.m. for London, Heathrow — were greeted by Mumbai International Airport Ltd. Chairman G.V.K. Reddy and Managing Director G.V. Sanjay Reddy.
The passengers were presented with goodie bags and special permanent baggage tags to mark the occasion saying ‘First to Experience T2’.
The old international terminal was closed for operations at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan threw open the Sahar Elevated Access Road (SEAR), a flyover to transports international passengers directly to the CSIA from Western Express Highway, cutting travel time by nearly 30 minutes.
The Rs.400.77 crore SEAR is a six-lane, 2.20 km-long signal-free approach road to CSIA T2 and is considered a missing link which has been now completed.
The modern, world-class T2 was inaugurated Jan 10 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Spread over 4.40 million square feet, the compact, new T-2 sets global benchmarks in airport infrastructure development, with a capacity to handle 40 million passengers annually.
It also features India’s largest public art gallery, ‘Jaya He’ in the form of a three km long Art Wall, illuminated by skylights with over 5,000 artworks and artefacts from all over the country.
India’s tallest Air Traffic Control tower — at the height of a 30-storey skyscraper — became functional at CSIA Jan 1.
The 83.8 metre-tall tower was built at a cost of Rs.1.25 billion and offers an uninterrupted five-mile 360-degrees view of the surroundings for better navigation and surveillance.
Equipped with the latest technology in communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS) systems, the new ATC has a capacity of handling 46 flight operations per hour.
This includes around 750 take-offs and landings, and controlling other air traffic movements like international air traffic in a 24-hour cycle making it among the busiest in the country.