Foggy conditions also hit AAI coffers

Patna: Reports of flights getting delayed or cancelled due to fog during winter causing problems to passengers generally hogs the headlines. But not many know that cancelled and delayed flights also inflict huge losses to the Airports Authority of India as well.
In fact, foggy weather makes a huge dent in AAI's revenue every year.
Take the example of Tuesday (December 25) foggy weather this year which did not not allow a single flight to land at the city's Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport. As per official figures, on any normal day the airport receives eight flights out of which six planes are of large size for which the AAI gets Rs 40,000 from each one and Rs 13,000 each from the two smaller planes. Going by these figures, the loss incurred by the AAI Patna on a single day was more than Rs 2.5 lakh.
Add this to the losses incurred due to frequent cancellation of flights during the winter due to fog.
"It has become a perennial problem as we cannot introduce the CAT-III landing system which provides landing facility even in zero visibility in Patna airport due to its short runway," said AAI Patna director Atul Dikshit.
29/12/07 Sanjeev Kumar Verma/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Dec 2007