AAI to operationalise second airport in Tripura

Agartala, Jul 15: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has decided to operationalise the second airport of Tripura in Kamalpur within this fiscal and announced to start renovation of the abandoned airfield soon.

Senior officials of the AAI said here today that the decision was taken after the announcement of the North Eastern Council (NEC) to make 12 more airports operational by the end of 2008, besides modernising 11 other airports, including Agartala, Dibrugarh, Tezpur, Jorhat, Silchar, Dimapur, Imphal, Aizawl and Bagdogra.

''A team of AAI engineers have already visited Kamalpur and demarcated the entire work to be done in this phase. They also opined that the length of the runway (4,500 feet) is sufficient for 50-seater ATR flights movement but the other facilities needed to be upgraded,'' the officials said.

He informed that in the last meeting of the state-level aerodrome committee, the Kailashahar airport, besides Kamalpur, was in the list of upgradation.

The Agartala airport was also proposed to be facilitated with sufficient lights for night landing but initially the work would be taken up at Kamalpur airport only.

The Ministry of Development for the North-Eastern Region (DoNER) proposed to increase the number of flights to 400, connecting the region every month by the end of 2009, officials stated, adding that at least 25 new airports were expected to come up over the period of the 11th Five Year Plan.

UNI