PUDUCHERRY: Commercial flights are scheduled to resume operations from the airport here from Oct 10. The runway length of the airport has been extended from 1222 metres to 1482 metres and night landing facilities have been installed. A new terminal building which can handle 300 passengers is under consideration, said Rajavelu. It is expected that the Airport Authority of India will complete all work by December. These works had been taken up following a memorandum of understanding between government of Puducherry and Airports Authority of India on June 16, 2007 for expansion of Puducherry Airport in two phases. Phase -I was the extension of the runway by 260 metres to enable landing of ATR aircraft along with ground support facilities. Land 19.92 hectares of land was acquired in Puduchery at a cost of `18.95 crore and handed over to AAI on February 25, 2007 for first phase development. Phase II comprising the extension of an additional 1100 metres of runway to facilitate operating large Jet Aircraft by acquiring another 200 acres of adjacent land in the state of Tamil Nadu.So far the government had spent Rs 18.95 crore for land acquisition and `9.83 crores for construction of a box culvert for the sewage pipe lines crossing the runway.The Airport which came into existence in 1989 has gone largely gone under-utilised except for a brief period from mid ‘89 to ‘91 when Vayudoot operated scheduled flights on 14 seater aircraft. Vayudoot could not sustain the flight operations as it had only one aircraft and operated the flight intermittently. Flight schedule became unreliable and passengers were often stranded at airports due to flight cancellation. Finally the unreliable services led to non-availability of passengers leading to stoppage of flights. The next attempt was 15 years later when Jagson Airlines, a Delhi-based private operator, came forward to operate flights to Chennai, Bangalore and Tirupati sector, six days a week from June 7 , 2006, after the government signed an MoU with the operator.An 18-seater Dornier 228 aircraft was flown to Puducherry and complimentary flights to Tirupathi with students took off with much fanfare, raising hopes of commercial flight operation. However, even that did not materialise with complications arising out of fare fixation and the assured sale of nine tickets out of 18 tickets by the government. Finally, Jagson withdrew its craft and crew, dashing hopes of Puducherry people and tourists.
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