TERMINAL VELOCITY

A MEGA AIRPORT IN NOIDA IS SET TO TRANSFORM UTTAR PRADESH’S FORTUNES AND REDRAW INDIA’S AVIATION MAP

-  BY K.SUNIL THOMAS

On a once-agrarian hinterland, dreams are taking flight. Barely into his teens, Jatin Kumar is making ambitious plans for his future. He lives in a farming village less than an hour's drive from Jewar in western Uttar Pradesh, where India's most exciting new project—the Noida International Airport (NIA)— is shaping up.

As in much of small-town northern India, Jatin’s grandfather and father both left the village for subsistence work in bigger cities. His grandfather was employed at a Bata factory in Kolkata in the 1980s, while his father shuffles between a string of private sector jobs in Delhi. But Jatin, who studies in a private English-medium school, is determined to stay. In his free time, he scrolls through aeroplane reels on his father’s old phone, dreaming of working at the shiny new airport once it is ready, and of one day becoming a pilot.

Closer to Delhi, Sinu John is excited, too, though for different reasons. A software engineer in his early thirties in Noida, he looks forward to shorter business trips. “On a typical trip to Mumbai or Hyderabad, I spend more time in traffic from Noida to Delhi airport than on the actual flight,” he said. “Evening flights are a nightmare. I have to leave by afternoon and pray I could get through the rush hour jam on the Noida expressways and the Gurugram stretch in time. An airport closer in Noida will make my life much easier.”

Lives and destinies of people and places are set for transformation as workers finish the main terminal building in Jewar, till now just a toll stop on the Yamuna Expressway between Delhi and Agra. “With Noida Airport, the Taj Mahal becomes a day trip from almost anywhere in India,” said Christoph Schnellmann, CEO of Noida International Airport. “You could leave Chennai in the morning, visit the Taj and return home by evening. Last-mile connectivity will be assured with air-conditioned buses and electric cars.”