No landing slots for intl flights at Vizag airport

Visakhapatnam: Restrictions on allotment of slots for landing and takeoff of flights at Visakhapatnam International Airport, which is a civil enclave on a naval air base named INS Dega, has come in the way of further improving the connectivity from the growing metropolis.

The city has been designated as the executive capital by the Andhra Pradesh Government and the potential for both domestic and international footfall is very high. But it has not been explored to the optimum level for want of permissions. There have been serious bids by certain airlines to introduce flights to Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and Colombo. At present, only direct flight to Singapore is available.

“There are only 60 slots available between 8 am to 8 pm indicating that only 30 flights can land and take off in a period of 12 hours,” Airport Advisory Committee member O Naresh Kumar told Bizz Buzz. He said restricting slots will hamper the economic growth of the city, which is known as the financial and industrial capital of Andhra Pradesh.

The Bhogapuram International Airport project, which has been awarded to GMR Group, will take three to four years for operating flights. GMR Group Chairman GM Rao at the Global Investors' Summit here stated that they will invest Rs5,000 crore on the first phase of the project. The project proponent said they will serve six million passengers once the first phase is completed.

At the recently held Airport Advisory Committee meeting attended by Visakhapatnam MP MVV Satyanarayana, Airport Director K Srinivasa Rao said that proposals for a new airport terminal building the size of the old airport terminal have been sent to the head office with an estimated cost of Rs240 crore. Once completed, the project will provide more additional parking bays.

The Visakhapatnam MP expressed anguish at the woefully inadequate facilities and said that he will speak to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to expedite completion of a parallel taxi track by the Navy to enable allotment of more slots. He also wanted resumption of regular air cargo movement, beautification of airport terminals and improvement in canteen, washrooms and waiting lounges.

The MP said he will speak to IndiGo officials to launch flight service to Dubai. He also wanted the airport authorities to provide a night halt facility for certain flights to facilitate their take off in the early hours.

Vizag ranked 19th in traffic

Though the second largest airport after Shamshabad Airport in Hyderabad in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, the Visakhapatnam Airport has ranked 19th in footfall, according to data made available by the Airport Authority of India (AAI). The members of Airport Advisory Committee expressed anguish over the ranking of the Visakhapatnam Airport.

Delhi has ranked No. 1 with a footfall of 43.51 lakh accounting for 17.44 per cent of total footfall followed by Mumbai 31.86 lakh (12.77 per cent), Bengaluru 27.89 lakh (11.18 per cent) and Hyderabad 15.77 lakh (6.32 per cent).

Bhubaneswar is ahead of Visakhapatnam. While Bhubaneswar recorded 3.51 lakh footfall (1.41 per cent), Visakhapatnam saw a footfall of 2.40 lakh (0.96 per cent). Bhubaneswar occupied 14th position among top 20 airports and Visakhapatnam is ranked 19th. Nagpur with a footfall of 2.37 lakh stood at the bottom accounting for 0.95 per cent of total footfall.