Two months on, no int’l flights from UT airport

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 25

Chandigarh’s wait for being connected to international destinations like Dubai and Bangkok seems to be getting endless. Even though the international airport was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi two months ago, there are no signs of the city getting international connectivity.

Though the state government, reportedly on the assurances of the Centre, said the city would get its first international flight to Dubai on October 19, it now seems international flights won’t take off from the airport for at least another month. As a result, the airport continues to function like a domestic airport, with 16 flights operating in a day.

Though no official date has been announced for international flights to start, Indigo is expected to start its service to Dubai by the end of December. Officials in the state Civil Aviation Department said another airline would be able to start its international flights only in early 2016, as it has a shortage of aircraft. New aircraft will be added to its fleet then.

Sources in the Civil Aviation Department of the state government said two airlines - Indigo and SpiceJet - had reservations about starting international flights because of two reasons. The first being the possibility of the runway being shut down for resurfacing and the second was inadequate air traffic control staff to handle flight operations. At present the existing ATC staff, which belong to the Air Force, cater to their own flying requirements.

Additional flights would require more number of air traffic controllers. One of the airlines that were supposed to start a flight from Chandigarh on October 19 did not apply for a parking slot at the Dubai airport for fear that the flight operations would be suspended in case the runway was to be resurfaced.

The Ministry of Defense has promised to build a parallel taxi track on additional land, but people are apprehensive whether or not a taxi track was fit enough to handle commercial flights. The ministry has also assured the state government that issues pertaining to the ATC and its staffing would be addressed at the earliest.