To facilitate night landing in days to come, the newly constructed runway is likely to be commissioned in the month of August here at Jammu Airport.Official sources said that the target to complete the new runway was May 31 and it is almost complete, adding, “it is a full length runway and the operation may be commissioned on the directions from the Indian Air Force (IAF) by August ending.”The routine flight operations, which were suspended in view of runway expansions and other allied works, resumed from April 20 at Jammu Airport.“Runway at Jammu Airport is not under DGCA and the final call has to be taken by the IAF after holding deliberations with concerned authorities but as per inside reports, the runway may get commissioned in August,” they said.Pertinent to mention that flights from Jammu Airport were earlier regulated from March 10 to April 19 to enable the Indian Air Force (IAF) to carry out resurfacing and other allied works after the Centre shot down its proposal for a complete closure of the strategic airport from March 6 to 20.Earlier in March, in a communication to Airport Authorities and Airlines, Senior Air Traffic Controller has written that the complete closure of runway at Jammu towards laying of final two top DAC-II layers on runway surface was approved by Air HQ and the same has been intimated to ED (Operations) Airport Authority of India, New Delhi.On a daily basis, Jammu airport has more than 20 operational flights with over 3000 travellers.The operational runway was 6,700 feet long and further being extended to 8,000 feet (1300 feet expansion) for night landing.Meanwhile, official sources said the process for expanding the existing runway from 6,700 feet to 8,000 feet on 18 sides to facilitate operations of aircraft with load penalty, will be completed at an estimated cost of Rs 80 crore.The Airport Authority of India has expanded, modified and upgraded the terminal building of Jammu Airport with enhanced passenger amenities, including doubling the area and per hour passenger handling capacity.Previously also the area of the building was increased from 6,750 sqm to 14,500 sqm with increased numbers of escalators and lifts while three aerobridges with additional taxing track were also commissioned.Jammu Airport had 1.6 million passengers in FY17 and now the airport handles 50 aircraft movements.
