Thursday, December 23, 2021

MPs from south seek development of Madurai airport for night operation, international flights

Madurai: Seven MPs from the south Tamil Nadu urged civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to develop the Madurai Airport.

The representation signed my MPs Su Venkatesan (Madurai), S Manickam Tagore (Virudhunagar), Karthi P Chidambaram (Sivagangai), K Navaskani (Ramanathapuram), P Velusamy (Dindigul), Dhanush M Kumar (Tenkasi) and V Vijay Vasanth (Kanyakumari) was submitted by Venkatesan and Manickam.

The key demand was making the airport functional 24x7. Madurai is not only the second largest city in Tamil Nadu but also the gateway to the 14 central and southern districts if the state. The Madurai – Tuticorin industrial corridor will get substantial boost only if the region is adequately connected to several foreign destinations through the airport, Venkatesan said. It is affected by unavailability of central industrial security force personnel at night.

Alleging non-cooperation of the Airport Authority of India as reason for inability to operate flights from 10 pm to 6 am by not declaring it a round the clock operational airport, the MPs said that this is despite the fact that the airport is handling much more number of domestic and international passenger traffic than certain other airports in the region. This resulted in diversion of many new flights scheduled for Madurai to other airports.

The MPs also said that Madurai airport should be declared as an international airport so that it will bring several additional infrastructural facilities. Noting that the union government had declared Coimbatore, Vijayawada and Tirupathi as international airports, Madurai Airport with much higher international passenger traffic is still a Customs Airport that is handling international flights.

Lack of comprehensive international connectivity at Madurai is critically retarding industrial, export, tourism and economic growth in this part of the State, they said. The MPs pressed for Madurai to be included as a ‘Point of Call’ in Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) with neighbouring countries as the city is the gateway for fourteen south and south central districts that have a population of 2.33 crore that is 29% of the state’s population.

22/12/21 MK Ananth/Times of India

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