Why Chennai airport can't handle jumbo planes

CHENNAI: Airports Authority of India (AAI) is expanding Chennai airport's passenger handling capacity by building a new integrated terminal and taxiways spending around 2,000crore, but the airport would still not be able to handle jumbo passenger planes like the B747-8 Air China plane in which Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation flew down.
The Chinese premier's flight was given special arrangements and not many people were on board; but a passenger plane of such size cannot operated from the city airport.Planes like B747-8 and A380 with capacity of more than 400passengers cannot be brought to the terminals because the airport does not have suitable aerobridges or parking bays. Neither will the terminal being built have aerobridges that can be used to dock large planes. And passengers cannot be disembarked in remote parking bays because moving so many people by shuttle buses will be impossible.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) had tweeted that the airport handled two 'code F' planes for the first time. Giant freighters of the same size have landed at the airport earlier. Passengers from the two Air China planes, who were part of VVIP delegation, could disembark because they need not enter the terminals. And, AAI converted two parking bays into one to park such planes.
British Airways used to fly a giant freighter to Chennai two years ago. The authorities used to block a taxiway close to the runway till the plane taxied to its parking bay. The wings of the plane was so wide that the tips used to infringe onto the taxiway parallel to the runway. Other planes were not allowed on taxiway when the plane was on the runway.
AAI has converted its taxiways by tweaking the markings to park planes of different sizes. "Two adjacent parking bays have been marked in such a way that space of two bays together can be used to park one B747-8. When giant plane is not there, two narrow-body planes like B737 or A320 can be parked in the space. This was recently done and is being followed at major airports to use parking bays in a better way," said an official.
Airport director S Sreekumar said it is difficult to handle 'code F' planes at the terminal with the available infrastructure. "The new terminal won't have the facility because there is no demand from airlines to operate such big planes here. If there is a demand we can do a feasibility study to see if infrastructure can be added to handle the planes," he said.
Because of this handicap, foreign airlines that fly A380 on Southeast Asia-Middle East route have assigned Hyderabad and Bengaluru as emergency landing spots.