Thread by @sanitydurast

Tis the season for misleading claims again! As Modi heads to #Jewar to lay the foundation stone for the #NoidaInternationalAirport, politicians are telling us the airport will be the "biggest in Asia". By what yardstick? Not by no of pax, flights or size. A #FactCheck

A top official from Yamuna International Airport Private Limited told me that with all the infrastructure planned for the 40-year concession, the Jewar airport is still not going to be the biggest in Asia. *By 2060* the airport expects to get to 70mn passengers (official PR data)

At least seven Asian airports were handling more than 70mn passengers annually before the pandemic (the level NIA expects to get to by 2060). Moreover, it is not as if passenger traffic at these airports will not grow further.

Similarly, the Jewar airport expects to handle 489,700 flight movements in 2060. Beijing Capital and Shanghai Pudong were already handling more flights than this in 2017. Therefore, neither will the NIA be the largest in Asia in terms of flight movements by 2060.

We've discounted flight movements and passengers. What about size? Will the Jewar airport be the biggest in Asia in size? By 2060, 2 terminals at Jewar will account for 488,000 sq mts. Beijing Daxing's terminal is already more than 700,000 sq mts in size

straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia…

Moreover, by 2040, Beijing Daxing is expected to expand to eight runways and will be able to welcome 100 million passengers per year. In comparison, Jewar will be at 70 mn passengers and equipped with just two runways.

To be fair, the government in India/UP has plans to further expand the airport by adding more runways and infrastructure. But all this will roll out, if at all, after 2060. To cut a long story short, we are not going to see Asia's biggest airport in Jewar before 2060.

I am not an aviation geek but because I filed something on this airport recently, I checked on all these claims being made - a basic exercise media here ought to be doing before parroting official fantasies. Fin

straitstimes.com/asia/south-asi…

Forgot to add.. there is an equally dubious claim in papers today that the #jewarairport will be the "world's fourth largest". By when and by what yardstick? We don't know.