BIAL new Airport

There has been a lot written about the new International Airport coming up in Bengaluru. One of the most interesting posts I found was the one written by Devesh Agarwal in his blog. You can access at : http://deveshagarwal.blogspot.com/2008/03/real-capacity-of-bengaluru.html It is a well written, technical article. While Devesh has given some points to ponder based on the technical specifications, I am sure there are other equally compelling factors both for and against keeping the HAL airport open. From a aam aadmi (an aam admi who uses the airport !), point of view, I see the following as points to keep the HAP airport open: a) the road connectivity is a huge concern for frequent travellers b) high usage fees c) resulting in some of the LCC reducing their flights to Bengaluru d) in a country where we are building infrastructure to take care of mostly the needs of the past ( as opposed to taking care of the needs of the future), closing an existing working infrastructure like an airport sound counter-intuitive to me. The points against keeping the HAL airport open are: a) the agreement signed by the Govt, which we need to either honour or renegotiate in good faith b) issue of congestion of airspace around Bengaluru c) Two airports will cause a nightmare for flight operators and people who take connecting flights by using Bengaluru as a hub If you put all these together along the point that Devesh is making on the possibility of getting approval for a second runway for BIAL, I feel we should keep the HAL airport open for some limited time, during which we solve some of the issues and for some others we will have more realistic data to decide on the course of action. But you do wonder, why the authorities suddenly woke up to the fact that we need good roads to reach the airport !