IGI airport main runway to be shut for 5 months

New Delhi: Get ready for some major chaos at the IGI Airport in the coming few days. The main runway will probably be closed for recarpeting in the first week of May, leaving airlines with no option but to depend on the `jinxed' new runway and a smaller secondary runway for the about five months that the work will go on. Combined with an Airports Authority of India's (AAI) indefinite strike from May 1 and a swine flu scare, passengers will have a tough time coping with the confusion.
In a bid to reduce the total closure time of IGI Airport's main runway, the Delhi
International Airport Pvt Ltd (DIAL) has scaled down its grand plans for modernising this airstrip. The earlier plan envisaged closing the runway for eight months and rebuild it completely.
Following advice from aviation ministry that DIAL must reduce the total closure time, the airport operator has now submitted a new plan to the government. Under this the top 50-cm layer of the runway would be removed and relaid. This work is proposed to be completed in five months. DIAL has sought permission to begin the work maximum by mid-May so that runway 28 which has the most reliable CAT III instrument landing system is back in use by the time foggy winter sets in.
"Ideally they want the work to begin in first week of May as the five month includes two months of monsoon when no work will happen. They will put a glass grid under the 50-cm layer. The runway surface has indeed deteriorated and after being scaled down, the new plan seems justified,'' said sources. The new plan is going to be considered at the earliest as a delayed approval may mean risk missing the winter deadline. Runway 28 has the most reliable ILS as IGI's newest airstrip (29) also has CAT III but its lights malfunction routinely.
29/04/09 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Apr 2009