Airport closure for 2 hours upsets operators

Chennai: The Chennai Airport authorities’ decision to close the aerodrome completely for two hours, thrice a week, has upset airline operators.
Airport officials intend to begin work on the secondary runway from Tuesday, owing to which the runway will be completely closed for the next 8-9 months. During this period, regular engineering and maintenance work on the main/primary runway would demand its closure as well for at least two hours thrice a week. As a result, both the runways will be unavailable for any operations. A decision to this effect was taken earlier this year.
“The Airport Authority of India (AAI), however, had not given us a fixed date and time by which they were to implement it with consensus of all airlines,” an airport source said.
A meeting between the Airline Operators Committee and AAI officials was held last Tuesday to reduce the closure period of the primary runway (07/25).
“The airlines had delayed in communicating their unanimous decision on most convenient time of closure and now they are quibbling over it,” a senior airport official argued.
15/12/09 ExpressBuzz

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Categories: Airports Dec 2009