- published: 12 Aug 2011
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Chennai International Airport (IATA: MAA, ICAO: VOMM) is the primary airport serving the South Indian metropolis of Chennai. The airport is spread across the suburban areas of Meenambakkam, Pallavaram and Tirusulam. For the Fiscal year 2014-15, it is the fourth busiest airport in India in terms of passenger traffic after Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and the third busiest after Delhi, Mumbai in terms of international passengers and cargo handled. In 2014-15, the airport handled 14.29 million passengers and about 342 aircraft movements per day. The airport is expected to reach saturation by 2016–17, necessitating the construction of a second airport.
The domestic and the international terminals are named after former chief ministers of Tamil Nadu K. Kamaraj and C. N. Annadurai respectively. It is the first airport in India to have international and domestic terminals located adjacent to each other. The airport serves as the regional headquarters of the Airports Authority of India for the southern region of India comprising the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala and the union territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep.
Chennai /ˈtʃɛnnaɪ/ (formerly known as Madras i/məˈdrɑːs/ or /-ˈdræs/) is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal, it is a major cultural, economic and educational centre. Chennai is known as the "Detroit of India" for its automobile industry. It is the fourth-largest city and fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the country and 36th-largest urban area in the world.
The city is host to the third-largest expatriate population in India after Mumbai and Delhi, with 35,000 in 2009 and steadily climbing to 82,790, in 2011. Tourism guide publisher Lonely Planet named Chennai as one of the top ten cities in the world to visit in 2015. Chennai is ranked as a beta-level city in the Global Cities Index and was ranked the best city in India by India Today in the 2014 annual Indian city survey. Chennai has also been named in the "hottest" cities to live in for 2015 by BBC among global cities with a mixture of both modern and traditional values. National Geographic ranked Chennai as world's 2nd best food city and Chennai was the only Indian city to feature in the list. Chennai was also named as the 9th-best cosmopolitan city in the world by Lonely Planet.