Rs 3400 crore for airports in North East: AAI chairman

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has allocated around Rs 3400 crore for the upgradation of airports in the North East region, AAI chairman Guruprasad Mahapatra said today.
The airports in the region recorded a total passenger movement of 68.04 lakh in 2016-17 and registered a growth of 27.02 per cent over the previous year, he said.
The AAI has allocated Rs 1720 crore for Assam, Rs 525 crore for Tripura, Rs 800 crore for Manipur, Rs 42 crore for Nagaland, Rs 211 crore for Arunachal Pradesh and Rs 60 crore for Mizoram, Mahapatra told reporters here.
Stating that projects worth Rs 934 crore had already been completed, he said work on the rest would be over in the next two or three years.

In Assam, the funds were for the construction of a new integrated terminal building, strengthening of the existing runway, refurbishment and a new Air Traffic Control cum technical block in Guwahati, he said.
In Dibrugarh an aircraft hangar and a new control tower cum technical block would be constructed, the runway extended and power infrastructure installed, he said. A new terminal building will be constructed at Silchar as well as in Jorhat, along with the modification and expansion of the existing buildings.

Stating that re-carpeting of the runway would be done at Silchar and Lilabari airport where an aviation manpower training institute would also be set up, the AAI chairman said the Rupsi airport would be developed.

A new integrated airport would be constructed with a hangar along with an engineering workshop at Agartala in Tripura, he said. The expansion and revamp of the existing terminal building, resurfacing of the runway, taxiway, apron and a new isolation bay were in progress at Dimapur in Nagaland, Mahapatra said.
In Meghalaya, the projects included the installation of an instrument landing system (ILS) at the Shillong airport and operationalisation and development of the Tura airport.
Tezu, Kailashahar and Kamalapur Airports would be developed in Arunachal Pradesh. A helipad or a heliport would be set up at Khowai, he said.
The Imphal airport in Manipur would have a new integrated terminal, while in Sikkim's Pakyong, the AAI would construct a greenfield airport for ATR-72 operations.