Sindhudurg airport construction to be completed by August

As much as 80 per cent of the construction work on the Rs 520-crore Sindhudurg airport in the state is over, while the remaining work is expected to be completed by the next month, an official release said today. Significantly, the work on taxiway, apron and isolation bay has already been completed, it said.

The greenfield airport is being constructed at Parule Chipi in the Sindhudurg district of the state by IRB Sindhudurg Airport on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis for the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.

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

The civil aviation ministry had earlier said it was expecting the airport project work to be completed by June.

Once functional, Sindhudurg will be the state's 14th airport. At present, it has three functional international and 13 domestic airports.

During a review meeting of the under-construction airports at Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri, chaired by civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu yesterday, the officials also said that the land issues were hampering the work at Ratnagiri airport, following which the minister directed the concerned officials to take up the matter with their counterparts in the state government, the release said.

Prabhu also said that he will personally talk to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to resolve the issue, it added.

"Eighty per cent work on construction of passenger terminal building, ATC tower, and technical building has been completed and the remaining work will be finished in a month's time," the release said.

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The construction work of ancillary buildings is almost nearing completion and will take a month to finish, it added.

The airports in Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri will provide better connectivity to the Konkan region of Maharashtra, parts of Goa, north Karnataka and western Maharashtra, the release quoted Prabhu as saying.

Besides, they will also boost the tourism in the region, the minister said adding the air connectivity to this region fulfills the objectives of making air travel more affordable for the common man, the minister said.