BENGALURU: The newly inaugurated New South Parallel Runway (NSPR) at
KIA
is handling 22 to 25 departures per day, say airport officials. After the second runway’s inauguration on December 6, the airport has been recording movement of about 675 aircraft every day.
Arrivals are expected to begin in March, say sources. Once operations on the second runway stabilise, the first runway will be upgraded. After both are operational, the airport is expected to handle 85 to 90 aircraft in one hour in mixed mode operations.
“As operations stabilise, we will scale up air traffic movements (ATMs) from the
new runway
. We also expect to rehabilitate the current runway (09L-27R) over the next few months...,” a BIAL spokesperson said.
Traffic at KIA, which was pegged at 33 million passengers per annum in 2018-19, is expected to grow in the next few months after a ‘sluggish’ period this year, says Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), operator of KIA. It has attributed the slow growth to “global issues”, including supply-side challenges caused by the grounding of Boeing 737MAX and engine trouble with Airbus A320neo.
“However, the market seems to be recovering, and once it stabilises, we expect traffic growth to continue at the Bengaluru airport. We estimate the volumes will be between 55 and 65 million passengers per annum (mppa) in the next five years, growing to 75-80 mppa over the next 10 years,” a BIAL spokesperson said.
Video on mock drill released The airport recently released a video which traces the new runway’s journey even before its scheduled inauguration. According to the video, simulation of an aircraft crash-landing on the runway was performed and emergency response systems were validated.
KJ Devasia, general manager, enterprise risk and corporate resilience, said: “...Firefighting, search and rescue operations, casualty loading, triage management and mobile command post activities were part of the drill.
Fog delays flights on FridayDue to dense fog and low visibility, 23 flights departing from and scheduled to arrive at KIA were delayed by several hours. One Air India flight from Ahmedabad was diverted to the Chennai airport.
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