Alliance Air’s ATR-42 is scheduled to depart from Guwahati airport. It won’t be an ordinary departure, though. An hour and 20 minutes later, as this 46-seater fixed-wing plane lands at the picturesque town of Pasighat on the bank of river Siang, aviation history will be scripted.
The Northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, often claimed by China as its own, will now be connected by commercial flights after long 28 years; Vayudoot, now a defunct airline, operated 19-seater planes to the state till 1990.
“It was not an easy decision for us to fly to Pasighat. The first challenge was that the airport is located in the middle of the jungle and it did not have the navigational aides that other airports usually have. But the issue was resolved. Flying to Pasighat, or for that matter to any hill airport, is absolutely safe,” says CS Subbiah, chief executive officer of Alliance Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India, adding how drains near the runway had to be covered and trees and lampposts uprooted before the airline was given the mandatory safety clearance.
No wonder, Pasighat airport was developed out of an airstrip originally built during the India-China war of 1962. The strip was partly paved, partly grassy. It was originally reinforced with perforated steel plates. In 2010, the Indian Air Force upgraded it.
What followed was installation of facilities such as aprons for ground manoeuvring, air traffic control tower, a security wall, a perimeter road et al. By 2016, it was ready for fixed-wing planes. The other Advanced Landing Grounds (ALG) at Walong, Ziro, Along and Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh are also ready, though there’s no flight connectivity to those stations.
20/05/18 Shantanu Nandan Sharma/Economic Times
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The Northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, often claimed by China as its own, will now be connected by commercial flights after long 28 years; Vayudoot, now a defunct airline, operated 19-seater planes to the state till 1990.
“It was not an easy decision for us to fly to Pasighat. The first challenge was that the airport is located in the middle of the jungle and it did not have the navigational aides that other airports usually have. But the issue was resolved. Flying to Pasighat, or for that matter to any hill airport, is absolutely safe,” says CS Subbiah, chief executive officer of Alliance Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India, adding how drains near the runway had to be covered and trees and lampposts uprooted before the airline was given the mandatory safety clearance.
No wonder, Pasighat airport was developed out of an airstrip originally built during the India-China war of 1962. The strip was partly paved, partly grassy. It was originally reinforced with perforated steel plates. In 2010, the Indian Air Force upgraded it.
What followed was installation of facilities such as aprons for ground manoeuvring, air traffic control tower, a security wall, a perimeter road et al. By 2016, it was ready for fixed-wing planes. The other Advanced Landing Grounds (ALG) at Walong, Ziro, Along and Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh are also ready, though there’s no flight connectivity to those stations.
20/05/18 Shantanu Nandan Sharma/Economic Times
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