The Hindu : Patna Airport not to be closed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 10, 2002

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National

Patna Airport not to be closed

By Gargi Parsai

New Delhi Sept. 9. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has decided not to close down Patna's Jayaprakash Narain airport after the Bihar Government today conveyed the steps it had taken to provide additional land to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for expansion of the airport.

However, the State Government has not conveyed its action on pruning trees in the approach path of the runway 25. About 2,500 trees had been jointly identified by the officials of the AAI and the State Government. Though the runway is 7,500 feet long, the landing distance is only 6,410 feet which also gets reduced to about 5,097 feet because of obstruction of trees.

Last week, the Ministry had threatened to close down the airport rather than compromise on safety standards due to shortage of runway available for landing the bigger Boeing 737 and Airbus-320 aircraft. The threat was based on the recommendations of an expert committee under the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) which investigated the Alliance Air Boeing 737 crash at the Patna airport on July 17, 2000. The Union Civil Aviation Minister, Shahnawaz Hussain, said today that the airport would not be closed down. Efforts were on to make the airport one of the best in the country.

Mr. Hussain said the Centre would pay about Rs. 5.4 crores to the State Government on account of about five acres of land being transferred to the AAI. For 1.8 acres of railway land which had been transferred to the AAI, the Civil Aviation Ministry had deposited Rs. 4 crores in the Railway Ministry account, he said. An AAI team today left for Patna to study the expansion plan.

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