ROURKELA: The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has yet again extended the deadline for commercial flight service to start from the ready to use Rourkela Airport run by RSP.
As the Ministry has assured to launch operations from March 2020, sources said the delay has stemmed from technical hurdles.
A delegation of Rourkela Chamber of Commerce and Industry led by president Pravin Garg had met Union Steel and Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on December 19 to discuss various issues of the city including launching of commercial flights.
“Rourkela was included in phase-4 of the bidding process under Regional Connectivity Scheme- Udey Desh Ka Aam Nagarik (UDAN). Pradhan has assured that Rourkela airport would be upgraded to C3 category very shortly,” said Garg.
Until February 2018, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) had spent about Rs 3 crore with plans of spending another Rs 2 crore in the second phase for infrastructure augmentation of Rourkela airport.
Later, in April 2018, AAI and SAIL had signed an MoU under which the former would operate and manage the airport for three years under the UDAN scheme.
In January 2019, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had replaced the private airport licence of SAIL with commercial licence.
However, RSP sources informed that the licence was technically confined to operation of 22-seater aircraft, which has been posing the greatest hurdle as immediate expansion of the airport is not possible due to land issues.
“This running airport is capable of receiving only ATR-42 type aircrafts,” they said.
Speaking on the matter, general manager (Planning) of MoCA VSP Chinson said though valid bids were received from airliners, Alliance Air and Turbo Aviation for Rourkela, Bhubaneswar and Raipur routes with ATR-72 aircrafts, no bid was received for ATR-42 type of aircrafts.
With Rourkela nominated as the second venue for Hockey World Cup, 2023, the State government should urgently prevail upon MoCA and SAIL to remove these technical hurdles as these have caused the delay to extend from August 2017.