The dream of having an airport in Arunuchal Pradesh’s
capital city is on its way to becoming a reality after the union finance
ministry on Friday cleared the proposal for the greenfield airport in Hollongi.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Steering
Committee of the Ministry of Civil Aviation had also cleared the proposal for
the greenfield airport on December 28Th.
Chief Minister Pema Khandu said the greenfield airport,
estimated at a cost of Rs 1,055 crore, will be a state-of-the-art
infrastructure which will propel economic development besides improving
connectivity for the local population.
After a detailed discussion, the Public Investment Board of
the Finance Ministry approved the land acquisition rate as proposed by the
committee and endorsed by the state government.
However, the board noted that it would be the responsibility
of the state to hand over the land free of all encumbrances to the Airport
Authority of India and set a target to have the airport ready within 4 years.
According to Mr Pema Khandu “It’s matter of great joy for Team Arunachal that today the decades-old dream of having our own airport has been realized. I thank the the government of India for their unstinted support in having this project see the light of day,”
Bengaluru’s international airport is expecting passenger traffic to surge by 70% over the next two years as multinational companies pour money into the city known as the Silicon Valley of India.
Airport authorities laid out plans on Thursday for a nearly
$2 billion investment that will add a new terminal and a second runway,
boosting the airport’s capacity to 45 million passengers per year.
The Kempegowda International Airport, already the third
busiest in India with 27 million passengers in 2017-18, is expecting traffic to
triple in the next 10 years.
Authorities have said that they plan to make Bengaluru
Airport as big as the Heathrow Airport in London. (London’s Heathrow Airport
had about 78 million passengers walk through its terminals in 2017)
Along with a new terminal, Bangalore International Airport
Ltd is also nearing completion of a second runway, capable of handling Airbus’s
A380s(The World’s largest aircraft) and operating in near zero visibility.
The parallel runway construction at Kempegowda will be
finished by the end of September 2019. The second runway will be four kilometre
long.
The new terminal T2 will be built in two phases. The first
phase will have 25 million passenger capacity. The new terminal will be
environment-friendly and will adhere to the ‘The city of gardens’ image of
Bengaluru. The terminal building will have lush green cover with trees specific
to the city.
By September 2019, 3,000 acre will be developed out of the
4,000 acre the airport has. The airport is also in talks with airlines in India
to make the Bengaluru airport their hub.
India’s total passenger traffic rose about 16.5 % in
2017-2018 to nearly 309 million, according to the Airports Authority of India,
making it one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Boeing Co
expects the country to become the third-largest commercial aviation market by
the early 2023.
Passengers travelling to the Chennai airport will soon be
able to shop at a mall, watch a movie & stay in a hotel.
Airports Authority Of India is going to build these
facilities in the 2 multi-level car parks which are being build on either side of
the airport.
The ministry of environment and forest has given the green signal
for construction of these facilities as part of the six-level 2,000-car park
project.
Here are the details of this project:
The mall and multiplex will come up in the
complex on the east side of the airport metro station while the hotel will come
up on the west side.
There will be seven levels of parking in the
east block and six levels in the west block.
The parking lot with its mall and hotel would be
connected to the airport building using a link bridge
This link bridge would connect to the walkalator
tube that runs parallel to the domestic and international terminal
Initially, the mall and the hotel were meant
primarily for the passengers but visitors too would be able to make use of
them.
The hotel will help transit passengers find good accommodation
without travelling to the city. Transit rooms are no longer available at the
airport as the old domestic terminal complex, which housed them, has been
pulled down to construct an integrated terminal.
The airport currently sees a traffic of more than 5,000 cars
a day. The multi-level car park will also be of help when the integrated
terminal is completed.
AAI has started work which is expected to be completed by July
2020.
If you pay close attention to most things you purchase at an
airport, you’ll notice that they are mostly wrapped in plastic.
However, in a bid to make the airports greener, the Airports
Authority of India (AAI) has imposed a ban on single-use plastics at 129
airports across the country.
According to a statement made by AAI, all airports will
gradually become plastic-free, and this is the first step that the authority is
taking towards going green.
Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Indore, Kolkata, Madurai, Pune, Raipur, Tirupati, Trichy, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Vizag airports have already been declared plastic free. These airports were selected on the basis of the third-party assessment carried out by the Quality Council of India(QCI).
Various steps have been undertaken to eliminate single-use
plastic items at passenger terminals and city side. These steps include banning
of single-use plastic items like straws, plastic cutlery, plastic plates etc.
Elaborating upon the next step in this implementation, AAI
said that it has also asked the QCI to check how the ban has been implemented
at 34 airports across the country that handle about 10 lakh passengers every
year.
Going a step ahead in making airports green, the AAI plans
to use plastic waste to lay new roads and repair old ones on the city-side of
its Chennai airport. The pilot project will be undertaken in either Madurai,
Chennai or Thiruvananthapuram.
The project will be implemented for city-side roads first,
and if successful, it will also be extended to run along the compound wall of
the airports and later, on taxiways.
Cab services driven by women for female passengers were
flagged off at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport(KIA) on Monday.
Karnataka State Tourism Development Corp (KSTDC) and
Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) launched an all-women-run taxi service,
Go Pink Cabs.
As the project is being run on an experimental basis, there
are currently 10 taxis available, piloted by women drivers.
Apart from Uber, Ola, Karnataka Taxi, MegaCabs and Meru
Cabs, women will now be able to book a Go Pink Cabs ride from KIA.
The cabs will be equipped with safety features, such as GPRS
tracking and an SOS switch in case of any emergency. Solo female travellers or
group of women can avail the cab services.
The pink cab service will be functional 24 hours and priced
at Rs 21.50 per km during the day and Rs 23.50 per km at night.
According to KSTDC Managing Director Kumar Pushkar, the
service has been implemented with an objective to provide a safe and secure
mode of transport for women travellers from the airport, while also creating
opportunities for women drivers to be self-employed.
The initiative is an effort to contribute to the
socio-economic development of women from villages around the airport by
recruiting women drivers from the vicinity.
Based on passenger feedback and demand, Go Pink Cabs will
expand its fleet in the months to come.
Every frequent flyer knows that flight delays are a way of
life.
And most travellers can guess when a flight will be delayed
depending on circumstances like ongoing bad weather.
But there have been instances when flights have been delayed
due to strange and bizarre reasons which have left travellers baffled.
Get ready to have your mind blown cause here are 10 strange
and crazy reasons why flights have been delayed.
1. Scorpion Stings A Passenger
In August 2018, a passenger was stung on an Alaskan Airlines
flight to Portland, Oregon.
The flight originated in Los Cabos, Mexico and was preparing
to take off from LAX when the incident happened. The delay cost the airline
about 50 total minutes, which doesn’t seem to be too bad.
But, the airline is yet to figure out how did a scorpion get
on an airplane.
2.Snakes On An Airplane
Well, the incident is not exactly like how it happened in
the movie, but the thought of a snake on an airplane can scare even the bravest
of flyers.
In 2013, a small snake forced the grounding of a Japan-bound
Qantas flight in the Australian city of Sydney. The snake, which was
non-venomous, was about eight inches long.
The flight took off the next day ,however passengers were
booked into hotels for their overnight layover. By the way, this was not the
first or only snake incident for Qantas that year and a similar incident
happened the year before.
3.Flight Attendants Fighting
In 2012, two flight attendants manning an American Eagle
flight from JFK to Washington-Reagan (DCA) couldn’t see eye-to-eye on something.
The argument got so heated up that the cockpit crew
determined it was necessary to turn the airplane around and head back to JFK ,where
it remained for nearly four hours.
It’s hard to believe that the issue was so big that the attendants couldn’t
work with each other for an hour, but supposedly
they didn’t!
4.Mice Situation
Last year a Qatar Airways flight from Madrid to Doha was
delayed for more than six hours after a mouse was found in the cabin.
Much to the mouse’s surprise, passengers were significantly
alarmed by its presence on the airplane.
On landing at the Barajas Airport in Madrid, the plane had
to be fumigated which resulted in a 6-hour delay of the return flight.
5.Slow-Moving Turtles
More than 400 diamondback terrapin turtles managed to find
their way to New York City’s JFK Airport, with several of them actually making
their way onto the airport’s runways and taxiways, leading to several flight
delays.
The incident happened again after a few years which caused
flights to get delayed by an hour.
According to experts, turtles had been using the same route
to migrate prior to JFK’s existence, which is why such incidents have occurred
in the past.
6.Asking Passengers To Pay For Jet Fuel
When an Air France flight was redirected from Beirut to
Damascus because of civil unrest in the August of 2012, the crew asked
passengers to scrape together whatever cash they could to pay for fuel.
The Syrian authorities declined to pay for the fuel, and
alternate arrangements were made, however, the confusion caused a delay of more
than 2 hours.
To be fair, it’s still better than landing in a country on
brink of a war.
7.Improperly Served Nuts
In 2014 vice president of Korean Air & daughter of the
airlines owner, Heather Cho, made headlines all over the world when she forced
a flight leaving JFK, to head back to the airport.
She was offered macadamia nuts in a packet instead of a
plate, which didn’t go down well with her.
She forced the flight attendants to kneel before her and wanted
them thrown out of the airplane. She was later escorted off the premises by the
police and was eventually arrested and sentenced to one year in jail.
8.Boy Band’s Shopping Spree
American sensations “One Direction” delayed an entire British
Airways flight from Heathrow (LHR) to LAX for 15 minutes so that they could do
some duty-free shopping.
According to a band spokesman, the band members had left the
airport between flights and had been stuck in traffic on the way back to LHR, however
they were spotted by fans shopping inside the terminal.
9.A Lawn Chair Got In The Way Of The Airplane
Presumably lacking space in his garden, Larry Walters, an American
citizen, decided to tie industrial
balloons to his lawn chair to enjoy a cold beer mid-air.
A Pan Am flight had to alter its course, at 16,000 feet
incase he flew up that high, causing the flight o delay.
10.Passenger Opens Emergency Door By Mistake
In 2016, one of the 130 passengers aboard a China Southern Airlines flight leaving Chengdu Airport (CTU) opened the emergency door just before take-off, leading to a delay of more than an hour.
The passenger later explained that he thought the door was a window and just wanted to “get some fresh air.”
For the 4th time this month, fog disrupted flight
operations at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport with 38 departures
being delayed on Sunday morning.
Around 11 arriving flights were also delayed as fog
enveloped the airport for the second time in three days. On Friday morning, 50
flights were affected due to the same reason.
According to the Bangalore International Airport Limited,
four flights, including three Air India flights from Ahmedabad, Vishakhapatnam
and Dubai, and another Indigo flight from Delhi were diverted to Chennai and
Hyderabad airports.
With an old Instrument Landing System in place at the KIA,
fog-related disruptions have become an annual affair and are expected to last
till February this year.
However, the commencement of flight operations on newly
launched Runway 2, expected from September this year, will bring good news for
KIA passengers.
Runway 2 comes equipped with a mechanism to help flight
operations continue during foggy conditions as well as with improvised
facilities for landing during low visibility.
In Delhi, however, there is no improvement in the situation,
after 41 flights were delayed again due to heavy fog.
Delhi International Airport Limited on December 6 said that
the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) is fully prepared to handle
flight operations during dense fog.
The very next day, 362 flights were delayed and 38
cancelled. In fact, since the first week of December, there have been regular
delays and cancellations at India’s busiest airport that handles 1,300 arrivals
and departures every day. And it has hit passengers hard.
If you’re a nervous traveller, you’ll be interested to know
that Qantas is the safest airline in the world, according to a new list from
AirlineRatings.com.
The Australian airline has nabbed the top spot on the annual
list since 2014, although technically it was a joint winner in 2018. United
Airlines is back on the list after the ranking left it out it last year.
AirlineRatings.com put together its list by sourcing data
from 405 airlines, looking at points like government audits, crash and serious
incident records, and profitability.
While Qantas has the top spot, Finnair and Hawaiian are not
far behind.
Here is the list of the top 20 safest airlines in
alphabetical order (which is how AirlineRatings.com presents the list):
Air New Zealand
Alaska Airlines
All Nippon Airways
American Airlines
Austrian Airlines
British Airways
Cathay Pacific Airways
Emirates
EVA Air
Finnair
Hawaiian Airlines
KLM
Lufthansa
Qantas
Qatar Airways
SAS
Singapore Airlines
Swiss
United Airlines
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Australia
The Most Punctual Airline In The World
Panama’s Copa Airlines SA has been crowned 2018’s most
punctual carrier in a global survey.
Latvia’s Air Baltic ranked second among airlines arriving or
departing within 15 minutes of scheduled times, according to a report by data
firm OAG Aviation Worldwide Ltd.
Hong Kong Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Bangkok Airways
rounded out the top five. IndiGo & Air Asia India have come in the Top 20
as well.
About 4.3 billion passengers traveled by air last year, 6.1
percent more than in 2017, according to a preliminary report by the United
Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization. Airlines filled a record
81.9 percent of their seats in 2018.
Here’s The List Of The Most Punctual Airlines in the world
in 2019
