Sunday, May 20, 2018

Flying to hill airports is absolutely safe: Alliance Air CEO CS Subbiah

CS Subbiah, CEO of Alliance Air, a wholly owned arm of Air India, tells Shantanu Nandan Sharma the Pasighat airport in Arunachal Pradesh posed some safety challenges that were overcome. Edited excerpts:

For us, it was not an easy decision to fly to Pasighat. Early this year, our technical team first visited the airport and surveyed its feasibility of operation. The first challenge we faced was that the airport is located in the middle of a jungle and it did not have the navigational aides that civil airports have. The problem of navigational aides was resolved with the help of the Indian Air Force. Second, the runway had drains on both sides. Those were covered.
Then, there were trees and lampposts nearby which had to be removed. Finally, a portion of the runway had to be strengthened. That was also done. After all, it was developed out of an airstrip. In April, we did the trial with our ATR-42 aircraft. Then, DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) flagged off a few other issues such as marking, etc, which were complied with.

On safety and restrictions at Pasighat and other hill airports
Flying to Pasighat, or for that matter any hill airport, is absolutely safe. After all, we follow all the norms set by the DGCA. Our concerns are more on infrastructure issues such as roads to the airport, taxi services, etc. For example, Pasighat town itself can’t make us a commercial success.
20/05/18 Shantanu Nandan Sharma/Economic Times

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