KOLKATA: The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has decided to develop emergency landing facility for fighter and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) at three places in West Bengal. The NHAI has identified a five-km straight stretch on three national highways, which will be made ready for the purpose.
Work for the first facility has started at Belda on NH-16, which connects Kharagpur and Balasore in Odisha. It will be ready by March 2023. The second stretch will be prepared near Singur in Hooghly, while the third one will be on the Hasimara-Guwahati highway in north Bengal.In 2017, fighter jets and transport aircraft of the IAF had conducted mock landings on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway to show that highways can be used for landing in case of an emergency.
“Over 30 per cent of the work has been done at Belda. Along the 160 km stretch between Kharagpur and Baleshwar, Belda is the only place where we found five-km straight stretch. Kharagpur has six airbases. The IAF needs facility for landing aircrafts in an emergency situation,’’ said an officer of the NHAI.
The stretch on Durgapur Expressway near Singur leads to Panagarh army base in Burdwan. In north Bengal, the emergency landing facility is important because of the chicken neck, the corridor with Nepal and Bangladesh, the two nations lying on each side. “The IAF wanted an emergency landing facility because of China’s location,’’ another official said.