New Delhi:
The new runway at IGI Airport
finally opened for commercial operations on Thursday, with an
British Airways Boeing 777-300 flight being the first to land
on it at 6.18 am. The flight was given a ceremonial water canon
salute when it landed.
The 4.4-km-long runway is the longest in the country and capable
of handling the largest aircraft category which includes the Airbus
A-380 and the Antonov An-225. The runway had been inaugurated
by minister of civil aviation Praful Patel on August 21 when the
first proving flight, a Boeing 777 operated by Air India, had
landed on the runway.
On its first day of operations, the runway saw 240 landings till
8 pm. One of the initial hiccups was that the November taxiway,
that will connect the runway to the domestic terminal, is not
yet ready. Once ready, this will reduce taxiing time for domestic
aircraft by about 2 minutes. At present, the aircraft are taking
about 20 minutes to taxi to the domestic apron.
Initially, the runway will be used along with the main runway
with landings taking place on the new runway and take-offs from
the main. Only when wind direction is such that landings will
have to take place from Dwarka,
the main runway will be used for landings while the new runway
will be used for take-offs.
The other problem being anticipated is that of 'go round'.
Officials said that with landings and take-offs happening simultaneously,
there could be problems of conflicting paths in case of a go round.
For this, revealed sources, the flight procedure may have to be
revised.
With the new runway, the flight handling capacity of the airport
has gone up to about 65-70 flights per hour. However, the demand
is about 45 flights per hour at present. With the global rise
in price of fuels, there has been a drop of 20-25% in the number
of 10,200 flights in the summer schedule. With fares likely to
go up even further this winter and the value of rupree depreciating
against the dollar, the number of flights is not likely to go
up any further.
With landings now taking place on the new runway, places like
JNU and Vasant Vihar
will no longer have to deal with the problem of noise pollution
they had to face earlier due to the low flying aircraft. The route
for landing aircraft has now shifted to about 2.5 km away from
the approach route to the main runway.
Source: The Times of India
