Patna: Bihar is shining with the highest growth rate in the country, but the face of Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport at Patna remains the same even though the volume of passenger traffic went up from 3.44 lakh in 2008-09 to over 1 million - 10,21,544, to be precise - in 2011-12 and the aircraft movement doubled from 5,230 to 10,369 during the period.
It seems the Patna airport has missed the bus of development while swanky airport terminals have been inaugurated at Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Varanasi and Raipur during the last six months. Even Ranchi and Bhubaneswar have got brand new, state-of-the-art terminals although they are yet to be opened to public.
The Patna airport's sounds like the story of many a slip between the cup and the lip. Choked at both ends, the airport's runway has an effective length of 1938 metres only, which makes the landing and take-off a tough - and risky - task for the pilots.
18/03/13 Jai Narain Pandey/Times of India
