Sindhudurg airport conducts trial flight with Falcon 2000

Sindhudurg airport authorities Wednesday conducted a trial flight successfully ahead of the announcement of the launch of operations likely next month.

A 10-seater Falcon 2000 plane with three crew members landed "successfully" from Chennai at around 11.50 am Wednesday, an IRB spokesperson said, adding the return flight departed at 2 pm.

The Rs 520-crore airport is being constructed by city-based road developer IRB, at Parule Chipi in the Sindhudurg district in the Konkan region of the state on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis for the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.

Civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu, who belongs to the Konkan region, later, in a tweet said that he had targeted the trial landing flight ahead of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in the state from the day he took charge.

"Day took charge @MoCA_GoI ordered #Sindhudurg airport trial flight landing to happen on Day before #GaneshaChaturthi, constant follow up, relentless efforts result in flight landing today," Prabhu said in the tweet.

State tourism minister Jaykumar Rawal had early last month said the airport was expecting international chartered flights besides domestic services once it gets functional.

"We are also expecting a chartered flight at Sindhudurg from Malta in December," he had said.

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