Watch hours at airport to be extended from March-end

Tribune News Service

Mohali, February 13

The watch hours at the Chandigarh International Airport will be extended by over an hour when the new summer schedule will be announced at the end of March.

The Chandigarh International Airport Limited (CHIAL) Public Relations Officer (PRO), Deepesh Joshi, said, “In the summer schedule, the airport will be operated from 7.20 am to 5.30 pm.”

The decision was taken on Monday at a meeting of all the stakeholders, including the Indian Air Force (IAF), associated with Chandigarh International Airport.

The IAF had curtailed watch hours at the airport from October 3-March 31, 2018, with the runway available for commercial flights from 5 am to 4 pm and no flights on Sundays.

The airport, is supposed to be closed for 30 days on two occasions for runway repair. The first 15-day closure began on Monday and operations would resume on February 27. The airport would remain closed for another 15-day period in the summer.

“The airport will remain closed for another 15 days in summers but the exact timing has not been decided.Once the runway repair work is completed, the airport would be able to operate flights to far off destinations,” Deepesh said.

The repair work includes re-carpeting, with the length of runway being extended from current 9,000 feet to 10,400 feet to accommodate wide-bodied aircrafts, which would facilitate long haul flights from Chandigarh to popular destinations in Europe, USA, Canada and the UK.

An IAF official said that no military flights would be operated from Chandigarh during the 15-day period. “Leh flights would take off from an airfield in Ambala,” the official said.