THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The delay in acquiring land for extending the runway and making approach roads is likely to affect the future expansion plans of the Kannur International Airport Ltd (KIAL).
Though the project was envisaged on 2061 acres of land, the delay in land acquisition has affected the project. As per the KIAL report, 785.45 acres of balance land is under acquisition.
Industry experts warn that the KIAL would meet the fate of the Trivandrum airport, which is struggling to find more land to meet its expansion plans.
The total length of the runway of the greenfield airport in the first phase has been restricted to 3,050 m. Only after acquiring 70 acres of land can the KIAL extend the runway to 3,400 m.
Faced with stiff opposition against land acquisition, Minister for Airports, Ports and Excise K Babu, on his visit to the airport in the first week of this month, had said that no further extension would be allowed. Similarly the construction of the greenfield road connecting the district headquarters to Mattannur, where the airport is coming up, has been affected because of the land acquisition delays. Compensation claims of the 40-km road that passes through six panchayats are currently been heard by the high-powered committee. There are as many as eight roads announced by the state government under construction connecting the airport area.
Notwithstanding the constraints, the first flight, albeit a trial one, will land on the newly built runway of the Kannur airport soon after the visit of the aviation regulator on January 22.
Though the trial was supposed to be conducted in December, heavy rain in the preceding three months had affected the plans, said managing director G Chandramouli. According to him, the engineers were working hard to finish three months of work in half the time to prepare the 2,400 m runway by January 20.