Parandur Airport Tender Expected by Early 2025

The Tamil Nadu government plans to call a tender by the first half of 2025 to finalize the concessionaire who will be granted the responsibility for developing the second airport in the city at Parandur with an estimated investment of ₹32,704 crore. A tender would be released after in-principle approval was received from the Central Government on the project. A senior official from the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, Tidco, said the tender for setting up the airport would be floated between January and March 2025, depending on the time available for approvals. The concessionaire so selected will be required to develop the airport under a revenue-sharing model, with bidding parameters to be specified.

Land acquisition for the project is already underway, with the proposed airport to span 2,171 hectares across 13 villages. This includes 1,386.43 hectares of agricultural land, 577 hectares of waterbodies, and 173 hectares of government or poromboke land.

Last month, Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, told the Rajya Sabha that the steering committee for greenfield airports had recommended granting site clearance to Parandur. The Tamil Nadu government has obtained the DTER, which will contain the master plan, the layouts, and the traffic projections for the project. However, NOCs from agencies like the Defence Ministry, Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the DGCA have to be obtained as the DTER is to be furnished to them. Besides this, the project needs environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change. In parallel, the Chennai Metro Rail Limited has established a feasibility study for its extension from Meenambakkam to Parandur

With this extension to be part of Phase 2 of the metro, it will further reduce travel time between the two airports to under one hour as passengers travel an impressive 60km distance for a seamless connection.