NEW DELHI -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday laid the foundation stone for the country's first zero-emission international airport close to the capital, an ambitious 340-billion-rupee ($4.5 billion) project being built and to be operated by Switzerland's Flughafen Zurich.
The first of four phases of the Noida International Airport in the Jewar area of Uttar Pradesh state -- spread over 1,300 hectares of land to be developed at a cost of 100.5 billion rupees -- is scheduled to be completed by 2024. The facility will have a capacity to serve around 12 million passengers annually. When fully completed, the airport will be able to handle over 70 million passengers per year.
