The presence of hills on three sides of Visakhapatnam International Airport makes the runway ‘unidirectional,’ where safe landing and take-off can only be from the sea side. This is restricting the landing/take-off of flights to not more than seven an hour.
Though the Navy has reduced its proposed exclusive flying slots from five to three hours with effect from November 1, it will still impact the operation of eight civilian flights in the morning hours.
Each flight brings about 150 passengers to Vizag and takes an equal number of passengers from Vizag, on an average, to various destinations. In other words, a total of 2,400 incoming and outgoing passengers would be affected a day.
At present when a flight is ready for take-off , another flight cannot be allowed to land as the outgoing one has to take the same route. This is resulting in the incoming flights being made to hover in the sky for about five minutes, especially during the peak hours.
Major limitation
Apart from wastage of fuel and increase in travel time by six to 10 minutes, it would also result in increased cost to the passenger and the airline operator. “The height of the Narava hill can be reduced and this would facilitate simultaneous landing and take-off ,” say AP Air Travellers’ Association representatives O. Naresh Kumar and D.S. Varma.
The absence of a parallel taxi track is another limitation at the airport. “The State government can coordinate with Vizag Port to provide 50 acres land to provide a parallel runway and remove restrictions on civilian aircraft,” they suggest.
“The Navy has over 900 acres, which includes a 9-point golf course, at the airport while the civil enclave has mere 275 acres. The government should think of utilising the entire 1,200 acres to develop the civilian airport on the lines of Terminal – 5 at Changi Airport in Singapore, which is handling 30 million passengers a year,” they say.
“The presence of the HPCL refinery and oil tanks close to the existing airport can also prove to be disastrous to the city as the military training aircraft make several sorties a day,” Mr. Naresh Kumar said.
