Chennai airport will soon have a drone flying over its airfield for an hour everyday for the next ten days. This survey, using a drone, will be carried out by IIT-Madras to look into the mitigation plans in case of another flooding in the future.
In December 2015, Chennai airport was among the worst-hit facilites in the city and for nearly a week hundreds of flight operations were suspended, leaving over 1,500 passengers stranded at the airport.
The water from the Adyar River that inundated the entire airstrip even damaged the boundary wall in several places.
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IIT-Madras, after conducting the survey for ten days with the drone, will submit a report in three months giving recommendations on how to prevent flooding in the airfield. Airport director Deepak Shastri said, “The study will help us understand how to divert water entering the airport. This is to ensure that we don’t face the same crisis as we had last year, in the future.”
He noted they have received approvals from all the authorities except from the Ministry of Defence. “If we get their approval, we will include their area too under this survey. If not, then the Defence area alone will be excluded,” he said.
For 10 days, when the drone is used, flight operations will be suspended for an hour. “But if there is an case of an emergency during the one hour, the drone operations will be suspended to allow landings,” he added.
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