Tamil Nadu - Salem   

Salem airport to be reactivated

Photo: E. Lakshmi Narayanan

Precautionary measure: Officials distributing handbills to the residents of villages located near Salem Airport, informing them about the ban on unauthorised entry into the airport area. —

SALEM: Airport Authority of India (AAI) has undertaken an extensive exercise of making people in surrounding villages aware of the reactivation of Salem Airport at Kamalapuram near here for commercial and domestic operations on November 15.

As Kingfisher Airlines has decided to operate flights in the Salem-Chennai sector from that date, the authorities in Salem Airport have also initiated a village-to-village campaign distributing handbills that the airport, which had remained non-operational for more than a fortnight after the NEPC airlines withdrew citing ‘commercial non-viability’ in the early 90s, would become operational once again from November 15 evening.

The people in the habitations located near the airport were told not to enter its prohibited area, which it said was for security reasons.

None should enter the area and mine the sand. Villagers were advised not to use the airport land as short cut routes, to go to villages.

The compound wall should not be damaged or breached for any other purpose and villagers must keep their livestock away from the airport and its neighbourhood.

The AAI with the assistance of local police distributed the handbills carrying all the “do’s and don’t’s” to the villagers.

They were told that it would be illegal to encroach into airport lands under the law and hence punishable.

“As the airport has catered to the small private aircrafts and choppers of private firms till today, many of these villagers are to be sensitised about certain precautionary measures to be taken when passenger flights are operated from here,” said an official here. The airport, since its commissioning in 1992, has been remaining idle barring a month when NEPC operated its flights to Chennai.

Local police were asked to provide security during the operations.

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