25 Indian airports with flight operations lack night landing facilities; newly-inaugurated Deoghar airport in the list

A country like India which has over 100 airports across the country does not have night landing facilities in 25 operational airports. The recently inaugurated Deoghar airport in Jharkhand along with Kushinagar airport and Shimla airport are among the 25 airports. The ministry of civil aviation on July 25 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. 

The process depends 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.

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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.

(With inputs from IANS)

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