The swanky international terminal of the city airport is facing an unexpected problem for the last couple of months. Many of the glass tiles used in the construction of the glass wall at the terminal have developed cracks on their own, for no apparent reason. Some officials of the Airport Authority of India, however, blame the labourers working at the airport for the cracked tiles, while some others say the tiles had cracked because of the increasing summer heat.
Sources at the airport said that at least a dozen glass tiles had cracked in the last couple of months. Fortunately, none of the affected tiles had splintered completely. They looked like frosted glass with cracks but had held together. This had prevented mishaps that might have been caused by shards of glass detached from completely broken tiles.
"There is still a lot of construction work going on at the terminal. We are sure some workers have been hitting on the glass wall for fun or throwing things at it during play. But we are yet to find out why so many glass tiles have got broken," said a senior engineering department official at the airport.
Another senior official, however, said that the glass tiles had developed cracks because of the growing summer heat. There was no other explanation for the rapidity with which the tiles were cracking, he said.
A third group of officials believes that the quality of the glass used in the construction of the glass wall was not upto the mark.
It is to be noted that the international terminal of the city airport was built at the cost of over Rs300 crore. After many delays, the terminal building was opened for commercial use on 15 September, 2010. The construction of the terminal was undertaken by two private contractors - Pratibha Construction and MS Khurana Group.
