Visakhapatnam airport to get six more parking bays by July next year.

TO facilitate night parking of aircrafts and to increase the number of early morning flights, six new parking bays would be developed at the Visakhapatnam International Airport, in addition to the existing eight. The present facility can accommodate six aircraft at a time. According to the Airport authorities, 30-40 per cent of the works has been completed and the bays are expected to be ready by July next year.

The authorities say the decision was taken considering the future needs of the airport which has registered a substantial increase in the international passengers in the last few years.

Statistics suggests the airport received 55,634 International passengers in 2014-15 fiscal year which was almost doubled (1.21 lakh) in last year. The number of domestic passengers too has increased from 10.4 lakh in 2014-15 to 16.8 lakh the neaxt year. The number of domestic passengers in June last year was 1.18 lakh while in June this year it was 1.68 lakh. The number of domestic and international passenger is expected to increase by 40-50 per cent this year, the authorities say. “Air Costa and Indigo airlines have approached us to provide them with a facility for night parking of aircrafts so that they can operate early morning flights. Hence, with the increase in the number of bays, we can provide the facility,” said Vinod Sharma, the airport director.

Presently, three international flights to Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are being operated from Vizag. Soon a Vizag-Colombo flight will be operated by AirLanka. “The survey of Vizag airport by the airline company is done and they are now waiting for the other clearances to launch the flight,” Sharma said.

In addition to the daily non-stop flight to Kolkata, daily flights to Ahmedabad and Coimbatore have been introduced recently. IndiGo has started a connecting flight from Ahmedabad - Hyderabad - Vizag to Coimbatore. Spicejet is operating additional flights to Chennai and Vijayawada.

Due to the increasing connectivity of flights from Vizag to 14 domestic destinations (earlier having a record of eight destinations) and increase in passenger movement, Visakhapatnam Airport would also witness the expansion of the airport terminals and the check-in areas to meet the requirements of peak hour movements. “Services such as to and fro morning flights and low air fares have helped regular passengers like us to save time,” PLK Murthy, a regular flyer to Bangalore from Vizag said.

THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS