The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is likely to revisit its decision to allow Calicut International Airport to operate wide-bodied aircraft in the wake of an Air India Express flight from Dubai overshooting the runway on Friday.
Sources said the no-objection certificate (NOC) issued to three airlines — Air India, Saudia (Saudi Arabian Airlines), and Emirates — based on the adequacy of safety assessment and mitigation measures to ensure safety of Code E aircraft would have to be reviewed shortly. It was in December 2018 Saudia secured the approval of the DGCA to operate Boeing 777-200 and Airbus 330-300 aircraft.
Banned in 2015
The operation of wide-bodied aircraft was banned at the airport from May 2015 in the wake of the Court of Inquiry report on the Air India Express Boeing 737 crash in Mangaluru in May 2010. One of the major reasons was that the tabletop runway had only a length of 2,850 metres designed to operate only narrow-bodied (Code- D) aircraft and that the runway end safety area (RESA) of the airport was inadequate for the operation of wide-bodied (Code E) aircraft.
The approval then, the sources said, had been obtained due to political pressure so as to benefit the lakhs of air passengers to the Middle East and the restoration of Haj embarkation point to the Calicut airport. Incidentally, the runway was reduced by 150 metres to facilitate the RESA expansion to the mandatory 240m x 90m as stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.The approval of the DGCA had come with multiple riders, including restricting the operation of flights only during the day time for an initial period of six months. sThereafter, the DGCA will review the situation for the night operations, the sources said.
Directive on SOP
The Airports Authority of India had then been asked to stick to the standard operating procedures (SOP) such as ‘regulatory take off weight’. For Boeing 777-300, the weight should not exceed 290 tonnes and for Boeing 777-200, 257 tonnes.
Further, the DGCA said the approval would be subjected to review after three years. Also the onus of the disabled aircraft removal plan had to be jointly put on the airline and the Calicut airport authorities in case of incidents such as tyre burst and aircraft running off the runway or taxiway.
