Indore (Madhya Pradesh): After the disastrous pandemic regime, 2021 saw slight recovery. As we usher in the New Year, Indore will have an extremely eventful start with the high-octane 17th Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas Conference, the big-ticket Global Investor Summit (GIS-2023) and a meeting of G-20 nations. The city guardians are doing their best to ensure that Madhya Pradesh and the commercial capital, Indore, encash on these events and place themselves on the superhighway of success!
Following the overall development of the city, the Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport (DABH) has received its share of facelift to handle these global events. A parallel taxi track, 15 new parking bays and two aerobridges will ease movements of flights and passengers. Action is being taken on a war-footing to vacate through these infrastructures every three minutes and ensure that there’s no congestion of flights while take-off and landing.
UPGRADING THE AIRPORT
Along with the beautification of the airport, the infrastructure is also being given a face-lift to handle the high-pressure events and the trial run conducted on December 29, 2022 was successful.
“We are aware of the pressure the airport will have to handle during these three major events and hence well in advance, it was decided to build the parallel taxi track. It may be noted that the taxi track is built parallel to the runway so that after landing, the aircraft shifts to the runway and then to the taxi track and vacates the runway for the next flight either to take-off or land. The taxi track will now reduce the runway occupancy time from six to seven minutes to just three minutes. And this will heavily reduce the congestion of flights either waiting to land or flights waiting to take-off on the other end,” an airport official informed.
Similarly, 15 new parking bays have been readied. With these, the total number of parking bays has been pegged at 26. This will allow 26 aircraft to park at any given time.
Two new aerobridges have been added. Following the approval of Directorate General of Civil Aviation safety (DGCA), the testing of all three facilities was carried out successfully on December 29, sources added.
“Ahead of the PBD Conference, the parallel taxi track, 15 new parking bays and two aerobridges have been completed.
--Shankar Lalwani, MP and chairman of DABH Airport advisory committee
