IAF fumes at civil aviation authority

New Delhi: The IAF HQ dashed off a strongly-worded letter to the civil aviation ministry on Friday, holding that "misinformation" being spread by its officials about IAF was just not done. The last straw for IAF was the recent US-India Aviation Partnership Summit, held on April 23-24, during which Airports Authority of India (AAI) chairperson K Ramalingam and others blamed IAF for not sharing enough airspace to ease civilian air traffic congestion in the country.
"Commenting adversely on IAF in an international seminar, in presence of a large number of foreign delegates and that too in the absence of IAF representatives, who could have clarified the matters, was in bad taste. It cannot be taken lightly," says the letter, written by Air Vice-Marshal D C Kumaria of IAF HQ to the civil aviation ministry.
IAF already allows civil flights from 19 of its airfields, ranging from Chandigarh, Jammu and Srinagar to Allahabad, Gwalior and Tezpur. So do the naval and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd airfields in Goa, Visakhapatnam, Port Blair, Bangalore and Ozhar.
"We have also given a lot of airspace to these guys (civil aviation). But they just keep on carping. It's just that they cannot handle the air traffic properly," said a top IAF officer.
"Despite the boom in civil aviation, they also do not have the proper infrastructure in place like parallel runways, rapid exit tracks, properly-trained air traffic controllers and the like," he added.
28/04/07 Rajat Pandit/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Apr 2007, General Aviation Apr 2007, Safety Apr 2007