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Mopa needs sound planning*
Philip S. Thomas
Some useful details of the ICAO report about Dabolim and Mopa have appeared
in the local English media recently. Ostensibly the report is, indeed, about
the two airports together. In fact, it acknowledges that both airports may
be needed on "social and economic grounds". It is silent on the issue of the
government's political credibility since the latter has openly backed the
idea of a two-airport tango with little or no clue as to how to proceed. The
report confirms our worst fears that Goa is sought to be stampeded into
going in for the old Mopa project in an unjustified way. The signs are
clearly visible in a series of surprising conceptual flaws in the ICAO's
approach.
First and foremost, ICAO neglects to address the issue of the Union Cabinet
's Resolution 2000 which mandates the closure of Dabolim civil enclave once
Mopa is functional. Ostensibly based on the 150 km separation rule, this
resolution may have been at the instance of the military under the guise of
enhancing the viability of a greenfield airport project for private
developers. The rule is currently under active review and may be relaxed
across the board. Goa should monitor the outcome closely before jumping onto
the ICAO plan. But Resolution 2000 will be an obstacle till it is reworked.
The next flaw is in the use of the term "dual airport system" in
conjunction with the tell-tale warning about the commercial and financial
risks of "splitting air traffic". The issue arises if both Dabolim and Mopa
are considered as "international airports". This was the source of the
original plan for Mopa, designed as a replacement for Dabolim, not as a
supplement. Once it was clear that both airports need to co-exist, ICAO
should have recast the plan for Mopa in 2006 to function as a smaller
regional airport (albeit with the vision and design provisions for modular
enlargement over time according to traffic growth). Instead it still talks
of a $325 million project (up 40% from $225 million in 2005) even though
capacity has supposedly been halved (from nearly 12 million to 6 million).
In India it is easy to fall into the trap of "dual airports" because the
pent up demand for airport infrastructure induces us to think that every new
airport has to be an international airport. But in the rest of the world
every new airport is not an international airport from Day One. The
distinction usually applied is between "primary airports" and "secondary
airports" which, therefore, constitute "multi-airport systems". For vital
historical and practical reasons, Dabolim must be retained by Goa as a
primary airport to the maximum extent possible and Mopa should be designed
as a secondary airport, at least at the outset.
In this connection, it is unfair for ICAO to single out the Goa government
for preparing an "airport development strategy" while overlooking the role
of its own client, the civil aviation ministry at the Centre. But it is a
good wake up call to all of us in Goa if the state is to avoid being
stampeded in unwanted directions. Goa cannot expect others to divine its
fundamental interests in aviation without participating pro-actively in the
planning process.
ICAO missed out on all the necessary parameters because it got side-tracked
by the nominal military element of Dabolim. It is "plane wrong" in saying
that "the primary use of Dabolim is for military purposes". On the contrary,
the Navy never misses an opportunity to play to the gallery by (a) proudly
proclaiming that it uses "only 16%" of weekly runway time for purely
military purposes and (b) suggesting that congestion could be easily reduced
if airlines made use of all the night hours. This inadvertently confirms
that Dabolim was originally a civilian airport and still continues to be
primarily a civilian facility even though it is controlled by the military
since Liberation. It is like a sheep in wolf's clothing.
The fallacy in the Navy's stance is that all hours are the same. In fact
the hours blocked by the Navy are peak (morning) hours for national air
traffic. What are available to airlines at Goa are mostly off-peak hours (in
the afternoon) and non-peak hours (at night). The latter may be useful only
for international airlines from the west and for domestic low cost carriers
(if concessional airport rates and low ATF sales taxes are charged). Indeed
it should be useful to the Navy itself though it has lost many aircraft ,
(for unspecified reasons), while "training" during broad daylight! But that'
s another story.
The last straw in the ICAO's approach is that it has got carried away by
the challenge of "financing" the Mopa project. This is the end result of the
process, not the starting point. It follows from the physical plan and
should not dictate it. Once you decide on a multi-airport system, the
traffic growth projections currently applicable, the destinations to be
served in a non-overlapping way, the state's development strategy etc, then
the financing requirements may turn out to be not so humungous after all.
To give the devil its due, ICAO is right when it says that "going ahead
(with Mopa) is necessary despite the importance of the currently planned
investment programme at the Dabolim airport". But in order to follow this
superficially sound advice, the Mopa project must be made sensibly as a
supplement to Dabolim without pre-judging the financing aspects. ICAO
observes at the very end that "only a detailed financial analysis could
better quantify the real potential viability of the project while
establishing the optimum investment required from the state government to
make it a win-win proposition." If so, it must go back to the drawing boards
about the real project. Anyone in Goa would say "amen" to the idea of a
"win-win proposition" if it means that both Dabolim and Mopa must win out in
the long run.
* Published in HERALD (Panjim) Jan 9, '08.
