bengaluru on may 24 2008 when phase i of the kempegowda international airport kia was thrown open for operations at devanahalli the sleepy village located about 30km from bengaluru it marked the start of a fresh chapter in the citys history now as it prepares to mark its 10th anniversary on thursday the airport has grown by leaps and bounds and devanahalli is much soughtafter real estatethe terminal at the airport which has the distinction of being one of the first in the country to be constructed through a publicprivate partnership was designed to handle 20 million passengers per year kia has already witnessed a record 27 million passengers in 201718 alone 30 more than capacityofficials say to handle growing footfall the design for a second terminal t2 will be finalized soon phase 1 of is expected be completed by mid2021 work on the second runway has begun and will be ready by september 2019 said a bial spokespersonofficials say that the combined capacity of t1 and t2 once completely operational will be about 65 million passengers per annum we have added more boarding gates and bus bays to create more physical infrastructure the official said this is an ongoing and timeconsuming process in the interim in order to accommodate rapid growth in passenger traffic we rely heavily on technology and use innovative methods to manage queues this ensures a seamless passenger experiencebial has introduced initiatives such as kiosk checkin facility and boarding pass printing machines in coordination with airlines for web checkin to deal with the flow of passengers selfservice increases check in capacity as the manual counters are used only for bag dropsd sudhakara reddy president of the air passengers association of india said th e facilities are far better than airports maintained by airports authority of india bengaluru is also set to be the first aadhaarenabled airport which is another tech initiative of bial