‘Panvel not ideal site for Mumbai’s second airport’

Panvel is not the ideal site for Mumbai’s second airport,a senior aerospace analyst said here on Friday.

Speaking at a function organised by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF),Hormuz P Mama said,“The Panvel airport has been planned on around 1,140 hectares,which has an ultimate capacity of only around 50 million passengers a year — nearly half of most other airports in the region.”

“The Panvel airport,with a planned passenger capacity of just 10 million in the initial phase,may get saturated in 25 years or so. Then,there will be no space left around Mumbai to build a third airport,” said Mama.