If the talks between the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) succeed, airlines will soon be saving on the fuel they spend after a flight is diverted due to bad weather or any other emergency.
Speaking at the Golden Maharashtra Infrastructure Summit, AK Trivedi, chief financial officer of HAL, said they were in talks with MIAL to use the Ojhar airport as a ‘diversion’ hub. “We are consulting MIAL to use their expertise in developing our airport. We want them to use our airport for flight diversion. This will save a lot of fuel to the airlines,” said Trivedi.
At present, when any Mumbai-bound flight is diverted due to any technical problem or bad weather, it heads to either Ahmedabad or Baroda. While going to Ahmedabad will take an hour and Baroda 45 minutes, going to Nashik will take only 10 minutes. “The airline will save more than Rs50,000 worth of fuel if flights are diverted to Nashik,” said an official from Mumbai airport.
The Ojhar airport has a runway of 3,000 m and is used by defence aircrafts and narrow-bodied aircrafts of Kingfisher. “We are working towards extending our runway so that even aircrafts like A380 can also be accommodated,” said Trivedi.
Tags: Nashik Airport
Oh really!
This will really be a treat for Nashik. I hope they’ll look at developing the runway seriously.