God's own country Kerala to get its fifth, fully private international airport

CHENNAI: In Kerala, they have their heads in the clouds and eyes on non-residents. A fifth international airport-and India's first wholly private one-is coming up in a state where no highway is more than half as wide as the National Highways Authority of India's standard minimum of 60 metres.
No other state in the country has as many international airports.Tiny Kerala, where narrow roads are the norm due to lack of land, clearly bets its future on its vast army of non-resident Keralites whose remittances account for 31% of the state's GDP.
Fittingly enough, the new airport is coming up at Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district, where a toy plane flown into a crowd could well hit a non-resident Indian.
"It's going to be the most state-of-the-art airport in the state, with two runways and a taxiway," Gigi George, managing director of the Chennaibased KGS Group, the airport's promoter company, told ET.
George said the company has got every clearance in hand and 750 acres have been acquired for the project.
The Aranmula airport will be close to multiple tourism destinations such as Kumarakom, the backwaters of Alappuzha, and the high ranges of Kumily, the Thekkady tiger reserve, and most of all, the pilgrimage centre of Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Pathanamthitta district.