Edition 61
Last week, the government approved a new Civil Enclave at Air Force Station Bihta, near Patna. The new civil enclave will cost INR 1413 crores. This will take care of the projected saturation of capacity at Patna Airport, even as the Airports Authority of India is in process of expanding the Patna airport.
The Civil Enclave at Bihta spans 66,000 sq.m and is being designed to handle 3000 peak hour passengers, with ability to double when needed. It will have 10 parking bays for narrowbody aircraft and two link taxiways. This comes 24 years after the deadly crash at Patna of Alliance Air B737-200, when one more time the need for a new airport at Patna was highlighted due to shorter runway and displaced threshold owing to obstacles.
Additionally, Darbhanga Airport will see a new terminal building with the award of work done in July 2024 costing INR 572 crore, while Patna Airport saw INR 25.34 crore worth of work was awarded for construction of a new domestic terminal building and apron phase three. This comes within days of another award of INR 23.87 crore for multipurpose building for IMD and Medical centre. This information was released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on its website as part of a monthly summary for July 2024. Darbhanga has been one of the success stories of RCS-UDAN with traffic seeing a major uptick and being successful even on non-UDAN routes. Darbhanga, like Bihta, is a civilian enclave.
While a lot has been said about the budget announcements focusing on Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the civil enclave at Bihta has been a much needed one. (Likewise, the terminal construction at Bagdogra has also been approved, another equally important approval) Once part of BIMARU state, Bihar has grown its economy in the last couple of years. Bihar now ranks 15th in terms of economy amongst all states in India. The economy of Bihar is comparable to that of Sri Lanka in GDP terms. Bihar is the third largest state by population. The state has a rich history and has a lot of tourist spots, especially on the Buddhist circuit. There was a time when one could not fly Patna – Bengaluru or Patna – Mumbai due to shortage of runway length needed to take off with requisite weight. Airlines operated Mumbai – Patna – Ranchi – Mumbai as a workaround. Newer engines, changed regulations helped change this. The gridlocked airport still can’t be expanded beyond a point.
Are the approvals part of coalition dharma or not will remain unanswered but the election slogan of Bihar mein bahaar hai definitely is applicable to aviation in Bihar.
Special Note
There is now an option to pay for a coffee to thank Network Thoughts for the effort that is put into the research needed to present these posts. The site will continue to be free. If you have learnt from Network Thoughts and want to pay a fair price for the content, do reach out via the contact us section or purchase Network Thoughts baggage tags. You can now order Network Thoughts baggage tags !
Follow NetworkThoughts on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.