In a letter to the chief secretary, Anup Mukherjee, he he said that since the Patna airport had emerged number one in the country in terms of percentage growth of domestic passengers as well as domestic aircraft movement in 2009-10 it needs further expansion.

As reported earlier Patna airport handled over 5.52 lakh domestic passengers in 2009-10, which was 60.4% more than the corresponding figure of over 3.44 lakh passengers for 2008-09.

All this is possible simply because of the introduction of the cheap airlines in this route. Patna is among the latest cities on the map of cheap route, therefore, it saw a big jump in the passengers. This may continue in 2010-11 too, whose figure is awaited. 

Agrawal’s letter clearly mentions the traffic growth and the acute space constraints that it has to face.

The shortage of space is not only an obstacle in the way of increasing the number of airlines for providing more options to air travellers, but more seriously, it becomes an obstacle in the way of providing fliers amenities at the airport.

AAI is unable to entertain requests from different airlines to launch air service from Patna. Recently, AAI had to ignore requests from a private operator which wanted to launch Patna-Kathmandu flight, due to this very reason.

The letter urged the state government to consider shifting the state hangar, Bihar Flying Club and IAS Association Bhavan, which are adjacent to the airport so that the land could be used for a new terminal building. But the state government is yet to seriously consider the shifting of certain buildings used by it from their present location and make available the land for the new facility.

A team of the state's civil aviation department has already visited the city airport to inspect its adjacent areas.

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