Maha's Sindhudurg airport may get int'l charter flights

The Rs 520-crore Sindhudurg airport in the state is likely to receive international charter flights, besides domestic scheduled services.

The greenfield airport, on which most of the work is completed, is being constructed at Parule Chipi in the Sindhudurg district of the state by IRB Sindhudurg Airport on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis for the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.

"The trial flight at Sindhudurg Airport will be conducted in October. We are also expecting a chartered flight at Sindhudurg from Malta in December," State tourism minister Jaykumar Rawal said after a meeting with his Malta counterpart Konrad Mizzi here today.

Late last month, the civil aviation ministry had said that 80 per cent of the airport construction work was over, while the remaining would be completed by August end.

The work on taxi way, apron and isolation bay has already been completed, it had said.

"We are collaborating with the tourism ministry to attract more Indians to Malta. We will be exploring more details of flights and will also see if Malta could offer the Indian diaspora cheaper route as well to come back to India," said Mizzi.

With a 2,500-metre long runway, the airport will have a capacity to handle 200 departing and 200 arriving passengers during peak hours.

Once functional, Sindhudurg will be the state's 14th airport. At present, it has three functional international and 13 domestic airports.