New Delhi: After being shut down on Wednesday due to severe flooding, the Chennai airport partially reopened on Saturday. Although only technical flights were flown and no commercial flights took off for the day. The runway has been cleared but only those flights which are stranded at the airport are being flown to other airports for technical checks.
Union Minister Mahesh Sharma said it may take 2-3 days to resume commercial flights.
Airports Authority of India, which runs the Chennai airport, said that restoration of airport systems, communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) equipment, IT systems, Met equipment is in progress to resume IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) operations for all flights.
IFR is one of the two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations.
"We started technical flights from Chennai airport. But we are unable to resume commercial flights as the basement of the airport is still waterlogged and power supply of the terminal building has not been restored completely," Sharma, who is the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, said.
He said four commercial flights operated from the Rajali Naval air station. Two flights of Indigo and one each of Spicejet and Trujet evacuated 319 people from there. Today, four ferry flights that were parked at Chennai airport departed for Delhi, Mumbai and Port Blair. One cargo flight Singcargo B747 also departed for Singapore via Bangalore.
34 aircrafts of various airlines were stranded at the airport due to flooding caused by torrential rains. Chennai airport had suspended flights till Sunday in the wake of floods. On Friday, it was declared fit for operating technical ferry and relief flights.
Following inspection of runway and other areas, the aerodrome was declared available for limited day time operations, under visual meteorological conditions for technical ferry and relief flight from Chennai airport, and subsequently upgrade to all weather operations as and when facilities are restored, an AAI statement had said.
On December 2, AAI had announced that the airport would be shut till December 6 after heavy rains caused flooding of the runway and nearby operational areas. "Chennai Aerodrome has been closed up to 12 noon of the December 6, 2015. The situation is being closely monitored and any further action will be taken subject to review for resumption of services as soon as possible," the AAI had said on December 2.
On an average, Chennai airport handles 320 landings and departures. As many as 20 international airlines operates from the airport apart from most of the domestic carriers.
(With PTI inputs)
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