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CEO racing to complete India's showpiece airport

Swiss chief executive Albert Brunner, whose nation takes pride in its clocks and watches, is racing against time to get a showpiece airport up and running in the high-tech Indian city of Bangalore.

April 2 next year is Brunner's deadline for Bangalore International Airport to receive and send off the first of the 8 million passengers it expects to handle in its first year.

That is a date the chief executive officer of Bangalore International Airport Ltd, is determined to keep.

If he succeeds, it will be a remarkable victory for a project conceived in 1991 but construction of which began only 14 years later after it was awarded in July 2005 to a consortium including Unique Zurich Airport, Siemens of Germany and Larsen and Toubro of India.

The airport, expected to cost US$500 million, has been designed for 11 million passengers a year, up from the 5 million first planned, as traffic growth accelerated with an expanding economy.

"The deadline is tight," said Brunner, who spent almost as long on negotiating the project as the three years he undertook to build the airport in. "But we want to show it can be done so we didn't shift the date."

Brunner, chosen to head the 1,640 hectare project because of a reputation for patience, may just pull it off.

Six thousand workers are working day and night seven days a week, he said, to ensure the deadline is kept in a nation where large projects routinely overrun by years, even decades.

By Thursday, 77 percent of the work on the airport being built in Devanahalli, 35km from Bangalore, was complete, Brunner said.

A fuel depot and cargo handling complex are being built at an additional cost of US$173 million for which concessionaires have to pay.

All concessionaires have been selected, said Brunner, who has been living away from his wife and 14-year-old son while he executes the project.

The concessionaires include Indian Oil and Skytanking to provide aviation fuel, and GlobeGround India and Air India plus Singapore Airport Terminal Services to cater to ground handling and LSG Sky Chefs and Taj SATS to compete for the food and beverage business.

"We want to make sure there's competition," Brunner said. "We want a clean, efficient, passenger-friendly and professional airport."

The airport will apply for a license by the end of September and start trials of systems the following month, said Brunner.

"We try hard to keep our reputation as timekeepers of the world," he said.
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