An Unfulfilled Dream: Mysuru's “Wish-List” Airport
By S.G.Vombatkere
24 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Every city needs good internal communication and good connectivity to neighbouring and also more distant cities. This is required to sustain economic activity of movement of people and goods within and between urban and rural areas. Transportation is the key to the health of the economy, and needs to be planned for the correct mix of various modes of transportation, depending upon factors of capital and operating cost, load, speed, etc.
But when transportation planning is not based on facts obtained from an economic viability study, planning becomes ad hoc and essentially wish-list-based. Wish-list planning is based upon “it-would-be-nice-if” thoughts and ideas, which some might call dreaming. In this context, consider the dream of Mysuru's air connectivity with Bengaluru ... and why not with Goa, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi ... ? Dreams involving public money, must be backed by careful planning and understanding of economic realities, with public transparency.
There is nothing wrong with having a wish-list; almost everybody has one. But converting items on a wish-list into agenda points involving public expenditures by using political influence is not the way forward in a cash-strapped economy with a skewed budget. There are better ways to budget and spend public money for fuel-efficient, rapid and cheap transportation of large numbers of people between Mysore and Bengaluru, than to cater for expensive air transportation for limited numbers of people.
Bharat Ratna Sir M.Visveswaraya, Master Planner and Engineer par excellence, whose name is legend especially in Mysore, might have questioned the way in which Mysore's airport has been planned in recent years. Sir M.V. would never have countenanced wish-list planning without economic analysis. Hard facts are often uncomfortable, but accepting hard facts is a sign of maturity, especially for planners and persons in positions of power.
Mandakalli's chequered history
Mysore's Mandakalli airstrip was built in 1948, and handled minimal Vayudoot feeder air traffic from and to Bangalore upto around 1985, when even this miminal traffic ceased. However, stakeholders who had Mysore's air connectivity on their wish-list played the Dasara & tourism card, and succeeded in talking Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines into showing interest in operating services between Bengaluru and Mysuru. This resulted in government investing Rs.82 crores to extend the runway to 1.85-km length, plus constructing a security boundary wall, a regular passenger terminal and ATC facility. The upgraded airport was inaugurated in May 2010 by Karnataka chief minister B.S.Yediyurappa. There is no evidence that any prior economic feasibility study was conducted to justify the investment.
It took till December 2010 to persuade Kingfisher Airlines to begin operating daily flights between Bengaluru and Mysuru; other carriers did not see it as commercially viable. But due to inadequate passenger load, the Kingfisher service ceased in November 2011. Renewed attempts to start-up again succeeded when Spice Jet service began 3-flights-a-week operations, starting January 2013. But this too ceased in October 2014, as Spice Jet was unable to sustain operations because of inadequate passenger demand.
Very soon thereafter, a newly-elected people's representative was persuaded to take up Mysore's air connectivity problem with the central government. His effort was rewarded by success, with Air Alliance (Air India's subsidiary) agreeing to operate the Mysuru-Bengaluru sector. An newspaper headline, “Mysuru back on the air map”, reported that on September 4, 2015, several influential politicians arrived at Mysuru by an Air Alliance flight.
Regular 6-days-a-week flights began in October 2015, but yet again, air traffic was “temporarily suspended” on November 17, 2015, reportedly due to “low passenger traffic”. However, the Mandakalli Airport Director assigned the suspension to “technical reasons”.
Innovatively encouraging loss
From the foregoing, one can easily deduce that Mandakalli Airport's start-stop-flip-flop air connectivity continues to be economically unviable due to inadequate passenger traffic. Successive private airlines on the Mysuru-Bengaluru sector have ceased operations because cash fares received from passengers did not cover operating costs and overheads. But Air Alliance being a public sector airline, it can be “persuaded” to operate the sector by subsidizing the loss by profits from another sector. However, if subsidy internal to the carrier is not possible, and government insists on its operating the loss-making sector, it has to provide the subsidy to cover the loss.
Tourism and Heavy Industries Minister R.V.Deshpande, who was on Air Alliance's inaugural flight on September 4, 2015, had declared: “To encourage the public flight carrier, the government will pay an incentive of Rs 9.5 lakh per month to Air India as a “viability gap funding” up to one year as per an agreement”. The subsidy, innovatively named viability gap funding (VGF), admits that the Mysuru-Bengaluru sector is not viable. This “incentive” is supposedly spent in the public interest. Besides such questionable budgetting and expenditure of public funds – albeit “only” Rs.1.2 crores per year – the larger question of which section of the public benefits from this could be politically embarrassing for a government which cannot find funds for drought relief, farmers, schools, health facilities, etc.
The proponents of air connectivity advance the argument that Mysuru is not attracting sufficient passengers because the existing 1.85-km runway is insufficient to permit operation of larger aircraft to and from destinations beyond Bengaluru. They demand extending its length to 2.4-km. The argument is not backed by any economic analysis, and is no different from the “wish-list-planning” which led to the previous investment.
The Rs.82 crores investment was made in BJP times, while the move to further extend the runway to 2.4-km for larger aircraft, calling for another huge investment, is under the present Congress dispensation. But the proponents of uneconomical air connectivity remain influential to push their “wish-list-planning” onto the budget and the works agenda, regardless of which party is in power.
An additional issue
Extension of Mandakalli runway to 2.4-km will interfere with NH-212. Widening of NH-212 to 15-m width by NHAI between Nanjangud and Mysore was held up near Mandakalli, because the proposed runway extension required realignment of a portion of NH-212. However, problems of time- and cost-overruns for NHAI due to land acquisition, resulted in shelving the runway extension and resuming NH-212 widening.
But the present renewed proposal visualizes construction of a 20-m wide road tunnel under the runway to overcome interference with NH-212, with funding from the airport project. Estimated at Rs.520 crores, it will add substantially to the investment necessary for Mandakalli airport, besides causing enormous inconvenience and hazard to already hazardous and congested road traffic on this stretch of NH-212 during contruction. And during normal operation it will require expensive security at the tunnel ends and cause drainage problems in the tunnel. This factor, just like the economic viability of air operations, has not been considered. The proposal for the road tunnel under the extended runway amounts to more “wish-list-planning” to spend more good money on an unviable project.
End note
At different times in Mandakalli's history, different airlines have found it economically unviable to operate air services on the Mysuru-Bengaluru sector. This would have become apparent if an economic feasibility study were conducted. But sadly, “wish-list-planning” continues to reign supreme.
The Rs.82 crore investment caused an increase in recurring maintenance cost of the airport due to salary costs of ATC, management and security staff, plus maintenance of permanent assets created. This on-going cost is already not recoverable from flight operations, and further upgradation of Mandakalli airport will increase the deficit due to increased maintenance costs for upkeep of an unviable airport.
There appears little justification for GoK to insist on operating – and perhaps also extending and upgrading at enormous cost – an airport which will become almost redundant when the doubled and electrified Bengaluru-Mysuru rail link can provide far better connectivity for passengers at Kempegowda Airport to and from Mysuru than Mandakalli can provide.
Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired in 1996 as Additional DG Discipline & Vigilance in Army HQ AG's Branch. He holds a PhD degree in Structural Dynamics from I.I.T, Madras. With over 450 published papers in national and international journals and seminars, his current area of interest is strategic and development-related issues. E-mail: [email protected]