<Now kids play cricket at Hyderabad's old airport HYDERABAD: It was witness to the evolution of this city from the capital of a princely state to a part of independent India and its metamorphosis to a booming IT hub. Now, the 76-year-old Begumpet airport has fallen silent with a new airport coming up. The Begumpet area, located in the heart of the city, used to reverberate with the sound of 250 aircraft every day. Today, its paint-peeling terminal building that used to be abuzz with activity is deserted. A few youngsters were seen playing cricket in the portico of the terminal building that till recently would be flocked by hundreds of passengers round the clock...It was also one of the few airports in the world to be located in the heart of the city and was very convenient to reach for most air travellers. People would start around half an hour before the reporting time. But to reach Shamshabad, passengers will have to start at least two hours before the reporting time. The initiative for the airport began in 1932 when the Hyderabad State Aero Club was set up for flight training. It was mainly a private initiative by Babar Mirza and P.M. Reddy, two young pilots from the city. The seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, the ruler of then Hyderabad state, agreed to extend state support for aviation activities and allotted land at Begumpet...The airport had about 800 acres of land but 100 acres were encroached, making its expansion difficult....At the time of closure, Begumpet Airport was the sixth largest in the country with a growth rate higher than the airports in metro cities. The international passengers increased from 779,988 to 949,539 last year. The domestic passengers went up from 2.8 million to 3.6 million...The airport also had a good safety record. It witnessed only three accidents...The closure of the airport hit the business in the prime area...While old-timers and a section of air passengers are sad over its closure, the residents nearby have got relief from the sound pollution. A group of citizens had campaigned for closure of the airport on the ground that the high noise level was affecting their health.> http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1157793 The death warrant for the airport was issued when the agreement for the construction of the new airport was firmed up (during BJP rule at the Centre). Now the airport is not only closed to civilians but its very identity, the IATA code, has been transferred to the new airport. It is the height of stupidity to practically expunge (or at least submerge) a part of the country's aviation inheritance. In other places, heritage facilities would be thoughtfully kept active and tended for posterity. Here the venality of private developers, the guile of the military establishment and the plane stupidity of the civil aviation ministry (not to mention the intellectual lassitude of the general public) takes the cake. The tragedy is that Bangalore HAL is all set to follow suit, with Dabolim in the wings and Pune, Vishakhapatnam etc etc all lined up as lambs to the socio-cultural slaughter in the name of modernity.
