Flight chaos at airport

Kolkata: A number of flights — both incoming and outgoing — were delayed at the Kolkata airport of Friday after a key taxi-way was shut down, throwing flight schedules haywire.
A total of 18 flights took off late while 11 incoming flights got delayed. Around 1,000 passengers had to wait inside departing aircraft for anything from 20 minutes to an hour. Rohit Sharma, a JetLite passenger to Bangalore, complained: “I had to sit inside the aircraft for an hour after the doors closed. By then, I would have completed nearly half the journey.”
Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials said the shut-down had been necessary to complete critical work on extending the secondary runway. “Taxi track A, that is used by departing aircraft, had to be shut down. Planes had to enter the runway using taxi track B and backtrack all the way to the northern end some 9,900 ft away. Thus, planes coming in to land were held up. Runway occupancy for departing aircraft shot up from a minute to nearly four,” said an air traffic control source.
AAI had issued a notice to airmen at 7 pm on Thursday, informing airlines that work would be undertaken to join the secondary runway to the newly completed 1,300-ft extension from 10 am to 6 pm on Friday and Saturday.
AAI decided to complete the work on Friday as airlines had complained in April about the airport’s main runway turning slippery due to rubber deposits from aircraft tyres at the landing zone.
At a May 23 meeting with airline representatives, AAI officials said the primary runway would remain shut till June 15 so that work could be undertaken to remove the rubber deposits.
14/06/08 Arpit Basu/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2008