Shirdi Airport to get a new terminal building, apron for INR 527 crore

The Maharashtra Airport Development Company Ltd (MADC), which operates Shirdi airport, has started building a new apron at the airfield due to the huge surge in passenger traffic. To update the current facilities, land marking and testing are now being done.

If finished, the new apron area at Shirdi airport should be bigger and able to hold more aircraft. Three ATR72 and one A320 can fit in the current infrastructure, which measures 225 M x 105 M.

The number of planes that will be parked has not been disclosed by the MADC, which oversees Shirdi airport.

The managing director of MADC and vice-chairman Deepak Kapoor tweeted, “New Apron marking and testing work in ongoing at Shirdi Airport.”

An anonymous MADC official added, “After the apron area is entirely finished, we will have an indication of how many aircraft will be occupied.

Aircraft are parked, loaded or unloaded, refuelled, boarded, or maintained in the airport apron area. The apron is not typically accessible to the general public, and a permit can be needed.

Apron areas designed for parking aeroplanes are referred to as aircraft stands.

The MADC has published a tender for the construction of a new integrated passenger terminal facility at Shirdi in addition to the apron. The company that purchases the rights will have two years to build the terminal, which is anticipated to cost 527 crores.

Only 300 passengers can be accommodated at once in the terminal as it is. After Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur, the airport, which opened in October 2017, is the fourth-busiest facility in the state.

Nowadays, Tirupati, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi are all accessible from Shirdi Airport. The airport handles 64,000 travellers each month.

The usage of the apron may be managed by an apron management service (apron control or apron advisory) to ensure user coordination when the aerodrome control tower does not have control over it.

The tower or ground control, as well as airline handling agents, receive this information from apron control, which assigns aircraft parking stands (gates). Also, it authorises vehicle movement outside of painted road markings, if such movement would obstruct an aeroplane in taxi.