KOLKATA: The city airport is set to augment the standby runway capacity to eliminate flight delays and diversions when the main runway is shut. The Rs 311-crore project will allow at least 30 flights to fly in and out of Kolkata every hour when only the secondary runway is in operation. At present, the secondary runway can handle 15 flights an hour.“We will award the work for extension of F-taxi track in April. The taxi track will first connect to the northern end of the secondary runway and then continue to connect the northern end of the primary runway. Once the project is completed in a couple of years, the secondary runway will be able to handle as many flights as the primary runway. This will be a huge help as now, flights have to be kept on hold and even diverted to other airports when the primary runway is shut for routine maintenance or during exigencies,” Kolkata airport director Kaushik Bhattacharya said.Tenders for the air-side capacity enhancement were floated in October 2018. After the project is awarded in April, it has to be completed in 30 months or by October 2021. The benefit will be felt from 2022 summer when planes can land from the northern side and take off from the southern end.Though the number of flights operating at Kolkata airport has soared in the past seven years from around 250 a day in 2012 to over 450 now, and passenger count has increased from 10 million to 19 million over the period, the runway capacity remains constrained. While the primary runway capacity has been enhanced to 35 from 30 flights an hour, that of secondary runway has remained 15 an hour due to the alignment of taxi track A that increases the runway occupancy time of departing flights.The 2,790m secondary runway is long enough to handle the aircraft that the airlines operate to Kolkata. But as the existing taxi track joins the runway around 600m from the end, planes have to travel the distance on the runway and then make a U-turn for the take-off run. This keeps the runway needlessly engaged for an additional two minutes per flight. Once the new taxi track is ready, flights can start the take-off run immediately after entering the runway. This will save the two crucial minutes per flight.“When the secondary runway is operational, the minimum gap between two flights is four minutes. Our endeavour is to reduce this gap so that more flights can be packed in an hour. Once taxi track F is extended to the end of the runway, it will potentially double the runway capacity,” said Airports Authority of India regional executive director (east) S P Yadav. The revised capacity will be, however, notified only after a safety assessment.Also, taxi track A is so close to the secondary runway that planes cannot begin taxiing for departure if another flight is scheduled to arrive or take off from the secondary runway. Once taxi track F is extended and used by aircraft taxiing for take-off, it will not hinder operations on the secondary runway as the distance between the two will be adequate.

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