Lengpui Airport To Be Upgraded

New Delhi seeks airport upgrade

Lengpui airport

Aizawl, Jun 26 : The Union civil aviation ministry has sought to improve infrastructure at Lengpui airport near Aizawl and make it more “passenger friendly” after the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) declared the airport “critical” in terms of runway length.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) sources in Aizawl yesterday said the DGCA, the country’s aviation regulator agency, had declared the Lengpui airport one of the 11 “critical” airports as the 8,200-feet “tabletop” runway was “short of expected length” and listed its technical facilities as “not enough”.

The airport, commissioned in 1998 at a cost of Rs 140 crore, is under the control of the Mizoram government, which has of late proposed to hand it over to the Union civil aviation ministry because of escalating maintenance costs, according to the sources.

The decision to identify the “critical” airports in the country was taken after the plane crash on the tabletop runway in Mangalore airport last month, a source said.

A tabletop runway is one that is carved out of a hilltop with gorges on both sides and having limited space for the aircraft to manoeuvre in the event of the plane overshooting the runway while landing like the aircraft in Mangalore airport.

The aviation regulator agency, however, clarified that there was nothing to worry about the Lengpui airport as of now and its possible improvement in the future was merely “a reassurance drive”.

The agency will soon rush teams of technocrats and specialists to inspect these “critical” airports and review their functioning.

Officer on special duty (state aviation department), Wing Commander (retd) Lalzawnliana said if the Mizoram government chose to hand over the state’s lone airport to the civil aviation ministry, it would have to forfeit its revenue earning from the airport.

Lalzawnliana said the regulator agency was yet to permit the Lengpui authorities to make the instrumental landing system (ILS-2) operational during the inclement weather like rain and low visibility.

U.K. Ghosh, senior manager of AAI in Lengpui airport, said early this month, a flight from Calcutta could not land at the airport for four consecutive days because of heavy showers and low visibility, for which manual viewer instruments were not enough.