Calcutta: Your daily commute might remain a bumpy one but you can look forward to smoother take-offs and landings from next year.
Unlike Calcutta’s ragged roads that have to make do with some hasty (and often shoddy) patchwork before Puja, the airport’s main runway is poised to undergo an overhaul starting February, its first in a decade.
The Airports Authority of India has cleared a Rs 122-crore project to resurface a tarmac that pilots have long dreaded because of its worn-out surface, made more uneven by rubber deposits from aircraft tyres.
The last time an overhaul had been planned, the projected budget hit a roadblock in Delhi. The runway saw some patchwork a few months ago to keep it usable.
“Rehabilitation and resurfacing of the main runway will start in February 2015 and we are planning to complete the task by December. The AAI headquarters has sanctioned the funds,” airport director B.P. Sharma told Metro.
Sanction for the runway project has come within weeks of the civil aviation ministry’s green signal to install a Category III-B Instrument Landing System in Calcutta. Delhi’s is the only airport in the country to have CAT III-B, a system that enables aircraft to land in dense fog with visibility of up to 50 metres.
The twin projects will start almost simultaneously, the airport director said. The contract for the runway job will be put out to tender in October. “We plan to keep the main runway closed for 12 hours during the day for resurfacing. It will be used at night,” Sharma said.
05/09/14 Telegraph
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Unlike Calcutta’s ragged roads that have to make do with some hasty (and often shoddy) patchwork before Puja, the airport’s main runway is poised to undergo an overhaul starting February, its first in a decade.
The Airports Authority of India has cleared a Rs 122-crore project to resurface a tarmac that pilots have long dreaded because of its worn-out surface, made more uneven by rubber deposits from aircraft tyres.
The last time an overhaul had been planned, the projected budget hit a roadblock in Delhi. The runway saw some patchwork a few months ago to keep it usable.
“Rehabilitation and resurfacing of the main runway will start in February 2015 and we are planning to complete the task by December. The AAI headquarters has sanctioned the funds,” airport director B.P. Sharma told Metro.
Sanction for the runway project has come within weeks of the civil aviation ministry’s green signal to install a Category III-B Instrument Landing System in Calcutta. Delhi’s is the only airport in the country to have CAT III-B, a system that enables aircraft to land in dense fog with visibility of up to 50 metres.
The twin projects will start almost simultaneously, the airport director said. The contract for the runway job will be put out to tender in October. “We plan to keep the main runway closed for 12 hours during the day for resurfacing. It will be used at night,” Sharma said.
05/09/14 Telegraph
