Airlines wary of Patna airport

Patna: Even though major airports of the country are finding it hard to handle the increasing number of flights, the Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport, Patna, is handling just eight flights a day against its capacity to handle over 60 flights a day.
The irony becomes more pronounced as the state passengers are still deprived of direct flights to many important destinations like Bangalore and Hyderabad despite the fact that the Patna airport, which functions 16 hours a day, has four bays.
According to sources in the airline industry, the operators are averse to introducing new flights to the city despite availability of passengers mainly due to the failure of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to provide sufficient length of runway. This problem becomes acute during summer when, due to increased temperature, the air gets thinner forcing the aircraft to go for more runs to get the same amount of propulsion. The airlines also keep many seats vacant due to short length of the runway here.
The physical length of the runway is 7,500 feet but the maximum landing distance available is 6,330 feet only.
Accepting this constraint, AAI Patna director Atul Dikshit told TOI that the present location of the airport did not allow the authority to do much with the Patna zoo located on one side and a railway track on the other.
24/10/07 Sanjeev Kumar Verma/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Oct 2007