The stunning new terminal of the Kolkata airport

On January 20, as President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the new integrated terminal at Kolkata's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, it added a new feather to the City of Joy's cap.

How does the new airport look?

Does it look as sprawling as the airports of New Delhi and Mumbai?

In this slide show, we present spectacular images of the new terminal. Read on. . . 

Airports Authority of India had hired a Thai-Indian consortium, Italian-Thai Development Public Co. Ltd-ITD Cementation, to build the new terminal which was long overdue.

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The state-of-the-art integrated terminal has been built at a cost of Rs 2,325 crore (Rs 23.25 billion).

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The new terminal can handle 25 million passengers annually, a leap from the current capacity of 4.8 million a year.

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Apart from the 195,000 square metre, five-level integrated passenger terminal building, the new facility also offers modern taxiways and extension of a runway, so that it can handle bigger aircraft such as the Airbus A-380.

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Initially, the new terminal will be used only for international flight operations.

Airliners will shift their facilities from the existing terminal to the new one in a phased manner.

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Although West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had asked the AAI to make new facility fully operational in 15 days, officials said this could be done only by the end of March.

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After the entire operations shift to the new terminal, the existing international terminal in Kolkata airport will be closed.

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The area will be used for future expansion of the airport.

With the launch of the new terminal, four international airlines have shown interest to operate to and from Kolkata.

Gulf Air, Japan Airlines, Turkish Airlines and FlyDubai have shown interset for Kolkata operations.

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Among the foreign airlines that currently operate out of Kolkata include Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, AirAsia, Druk Air, SilkAir, China Eastern Airlines, United Airways, GMG Airlines, Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Dragonair.