No runway expansion at Mangaluru Airport for now

Mangaluru, Aug 21: Even though Karnataka government has set aside Rs 3,399.36 lakh for acquisition of 396.67 acres of land for the expansion of Mangaluru International Airport, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) has reportedly postponed its plan of runway expansion.

In a fresh development, AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra has written to Karnataka Chief Secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia saying the expansion project is not feasible.

However, the state government has decided to go ahead with the plan of acquisition of 34 acres of land to set up RESA (Runway End Safety Area) will be done as per the directions of DGCA (Director General of Civil Aviation).

After 2010 air crash, the AAI had proposed to expand the new runway from 2,450 m to 2,740 m. The existing runway meets the requirements of Airbus 320/321 and Boeing-737 aircraft. However, expansion is must to felicitate the landing of wide-bodied aircraft like Boeing-777 and Boeing-747.

The expansion will also increase the number of destinations/connectivity worldwide. Currently, Mangaluru is directly connected to Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai with multiple daily flights in this domestic sector and Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Dammam, Sharjah, Doha, Bahrain and Muscat in the international sector.

If sources are to be believed, high cost and other challenges including table-top runway forced the AAI to postpone the expansion plan. On the other hand AAI may take other steps to maximise operations at the Airport in the present scenario, limiting the operations to Airbus 320/321 and Boeing-737 with load penalty.