COI to modernise 35 non-metro airports

New Delhi, Sep 6 (UNI) The Committee on Infrastructure (COI) has decided to modernise 35 non-metro airports. The air side of all these airports would be developed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

He said that the city side development of 24 out of the 35 non-metro Airports would be taken up through private sector participation. These include Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Guwahati in Assam, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Vadodara in Gujarat, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Trivandrum in Kerala, Mangalore in Karnataka, Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Bhopal, Indore, Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, Dimapur in Nagaland, Bhubaneswar in Orissa, Amritsar in Punjab, Jaipur, Udaipur in Rajasthan, Madurai, Trichy in Tamil Nadu, Agartala in Tripura, Lucknow, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Deharadun in Uttarakhand.

Responding to another question, Mr Patel said that the Government has plans to make arrangements for low visibility landings at smaller airports to ease traffic congestion at major airports in the country.

He said the AAI planned to install Instrument Landing System (ILS) at Lilabari, Silchar, Gaya, Surat, Gondia, Dehradun, Porbandar, Belguam, Hubli, Vijayawada, Tirupati and Port Blair airports in a phased manner by September 2009.

UNI