Airport across two islands in Lakshadweep

New Delhi:The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is planning to extend the small runway at Agatti island that can at present handle only small Dorniers by merging it with island about half-a-km away.
The idea is to prevent water of shallow sea from entering the 400-metre-stretch between Agatti and nearby Kalpati island.
This place would then be filled and the runway extended from the current 1,204 metres to 1,600 metres.
Sources said a team of IIT (Chennai) experts are going to Lakshadweep this week to examine how exactly this feet would be achieved.
At present, Indian operates an 18-seater Dornier to Agatti from Cochin and because of the low carriage the one-way fare is a whopping Rs 8,650.
The expanded runway would be able to accommodate an ATR that can have anywhere between 68 and 48 seats and the fares could drop by over 50 %.
15/02/07 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: airports feb 2007, New feb 2007