New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) There are 25 airports across the country which don't have night landing facilities. Kushinagar airport, Shimla airport and recently inaugurated Deoghar airport in Jharkhand are among the list of 25 airports.
The ministry of civil aviation on Monday said in the Rajya Sabha that the upgradation or modernisation of airports, including provision of night landing facility is a continuous process and is undertaken by Airports Authority of India (AAI) and other airport operators from time to time depending on the availability of land, commercial viability, socio- economic considerations, traffic demand and willingness of airlines to operate to/from such airports etc.
"Presently night landing facility which is purely demand and need based on operational requirement of airlines and availability of land is not available at 25 operational airports with scheduled flight operations," said the ministry.
The list of airports not having night landing facility also include airports like Kullu and Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur and Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh, Kalaburagi in Karnataka, Kolhapur and Sindhudurg in Maharashtra and and Ludhiana in Punjab among others.
AAI has undertaken installation of a night landing facility at Kolhapur airport. A team of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has carried out the inspection of the airport on June 10, 2022. AAI has already initiated action for compliance of the observations made by DGCA during the inspection.
The country has over 100 operational airports and officials said that the airports not having night landing facilities are mostly those recording lower air passenger traffic. Airports Authority of India, which manages most of the airports in India, takes up a particular one for consideration for providing night landing facilities, when airlines show an interest during night operations.
The former Union Minister also slammed Shashi Tharoor for his statement that praising the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for doing the right things would lend credibility to the opposition’s criticism of him.
