Mosque shift to extend Kol airport lifeline by 10 yrs | Kolkata News

Kolkata: The airport mosque shift will give Kolkata airport a lifeline of 10 more years, aviation industry experts said.While the civil aviation ministry and the state govt have cited airport’s safety and security to push for the relocation of the mosque that is situated at the end of the secondary runway, officials who have served at the airport said the airport capacity that is due to get saturated by 2035 can be extended by a decade if the mosque is shifted and the secondary runway gets upgraded to match the primary runway.According to an aircraft movement forecast, the number of daily flight movements is expected to go up from 174 at present to 351 by 2035. Passenger movement is forecast to shoot up from 2.5 crore now to 5.6 crore in 2035.While the passenger handling capacity will be increased by constructing a new terminal, to extend the life of the airport beyond 2035, the runway capacity needs to go up as well. Airport officials said shifting the mosque and making the land available for the full utilisation of the secondary runway is key to that.Now, the primary runway has a peak capacity of 42 flights an hour. But when the operation shifts to the secondary runway once or twice a week due to maintenance requirements, it drops to 27 flights an hour. The average works out to 33 flights an hour.“Once the mosque goes, the entire length of the runway can be utilised. This will increase the flight handling capability of the secondary runway to 42 as well. The hourly average can increase from 33 flights to 43 flights. That would mean an additional 10 flights an hour or 120 more flights over a 12-hour period when maximum flights operate in a day,” an air traffic control official at Kolkata airport said.Operation of 120 more flights a day works out to at least 18,000 more flyers daily or over 65 lakh in a year.“Increasing the airside capacity of Kolkata airport is absolutely crucial because unlike Jewar Airport in Noida near Delhi and Navi Mumbai International Airport near Mumbai, there is no alternative airport in Kolkata. Unless the airport’s aircraft handling capacity goes up, Kolkata and the rest of India’s economic growth will stagnate,” said Kaushik Bhattacharya, former director of Kolkata airport.While the plot on which the mosque is situated belongs to the airport (the area along the northern end of Kolkata airport was acquired during the expansion in the 1960s), the mosque is not an encroachment as it predates the airport by several decades.“The state has to convince the mosque authorities that they will construct an alternative mosque and facilitate the shift before demolishing the structure,” said another official.SAFETY ISSUES* The mosque poses a hazard for Runway End Safety Area (RESA). While the secondary runway should have a RESA or free area of 240 m beyond the end of the runway should an aircraft overshoot, the mosque is 160 m from the northern edge of the secondary runway* To meet the RESA requirement, the airport follows an 88-metre runway displacement that restricts the effective usable length of the secondary runway. While it is still suitable for narrow-body aircraft, it cannot accommodate wide-body jets* The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which oversees airport security, has also flagged the issue of outsiders’ access to the airport operational area. Though devotees are frisked and register their names before being allowed to board the mosque-bound bus, CISF pointed out that they did not have clearance under the standard Aerodrome Entry Permit (AEP) framework that governs all airside access with biometric verification and role-based access