NEW DELHI: With just two parking bays available at the Hindon Airport for commercial planes and no operations permitted between sunset and sunrise, the airfield owned by the Indian Air Force remains severely unutilised.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) now wants to increase flight operations as the airport and has recently completed a survey of the land required to triple the number of parking spots.
Airport director Chilaka Mahesh said on Saturday, “We are looking at increasing the number of parking bays from the existing two to six at the earliest, which will require around 34,500 square metres of land. A survey to identify the land required was conducted by AAI officials recently along with the defence estate and the revenue officials of Uttar Pradesh.” He said that the report of this survey has been submitted to the defence estates department.
Mahesh is confident of getting the green signal for the expansion soon. “We will need six to seven months to ready the four parking bays. When the parking slots increase, the routes from this airport as well as the number of airlines from here will increase too,” he said. The AAI has posted a deputy general manager recently at the Hindon Airport to sort out the land issue and focus on the airport’s expansion, he added.
The AAI began operations from the Hindon Airport on October 11, 2019, largely to facilitate regional connectivity under the UDAAN scheme. While Star Air operates under the scheme from this airport, Indigo and Air India Express use it to connect key state capitals. An average of 46 flights operate from this airport daily, with around 5,000 people arriving or departing from here.
Another airport official said, “The terminal had been designed to cater to roughly 300 people but it handles 15 times the capacity. There is a demand to operate more flights. MPs from Pragyaraj and Lucknow want the airports in their cities to be connected with it.”
There is a need for more parking bays for flights here. “There are times when an aircraft gets grounded in one of the bays due to some issue. At that time, the capacity of flights that can be handled nosedives to 50%,” he specified.
Expansion Plan
34,500 sq m is the land area required by AAI to add four more parking bays for commercial aircraft
46 is the average number of flights operating from airport daily
5,000 is the number of passengers using the airport daily
`46.6 crore is the cost at which the Hindon Airport was built
