A view of the Tiruchi International Airport decked up on the eve of Republic Day.
A proposal for expansion of the Tiruchi international airport runway from 8,000 feet to 12,500 feet at a cost of ₹350 crore has been sent to Airports Authority of India for planning approval, Airport Director, Tiruchi, S.S. Raju said on Monday.
The work for the construction of a compound wall for the land acquired for runway expansion will be awarded by next month.
Highlighting the developmental works at the Tiruchi airport while speaking at the Republic Day celebration, Mr. Raju said the new Air Traffic Control Tower and Technical Block under construction at a cost of ₹55 crore would be brought into use by year-end.
Five more passenger boarding bridges had been installed at the airport at a cost of ₹14.8 crore with testing and commissioning in progress. With this, the total number of passenger boarding bridges would increase to 10. The additional one mega watt ground solar PV plant would be installed by year-end at a cost of ₹5 crore. Once commissioned, the airport’s total solar capacity would be 2.45 mega watt.
The passenger growth at the airport is expected to touch 3.2 million by 2029-2030. A total number of 640 new passenger baggage trolleys had been provided for passenger facilitation.
Mr. Raju said the airport achieved a 10 % increase in international cargo tonnage scaling from a monthly average of 540 metric tonnes to approximately 590 metric tonnes. The growth underscored the airport’s expanding role as a critical logistics hub for central Tamil Nadu and surrounding regions.
The airport was simultaneously advancing plans to establish a full-fledged domestic cargo terminal to address the growing demand from the regional trading community. The airport’s international courier facility, which remained non-operational since the notification in 2022, was now under process of being activated under a Public – Private Partnership (PPP) model through an Operations and Maintenance contract.
Published – January 26, 2026 06:43 pm IST
