News Analysis India

Tag: Raipur Airport

  • Helicopter crash at Raipur airport; two pilots dead

    Express News Service

    RAIPUR: In a tragic incident, Chhattisgarh state chopper Augusta Westland AW-109 crashed while landing on the runway at Swami Vivekanand Airport Raipur leaving both the pilot and co-pilot dead on Thursday night.

    Senior pilot Captain Gopal Kumar Panda and co-pilot Captain A P Shrivastava succumbed to critical injuries they sustained in the crash. Both the pilots were rushed to the private hospital where the doctors declared brought dead. There were no passengers on board.

    According to a preliminary information, the state helicopter was carrying out a night flying, while it crashed before landing, apparently owing to some technical snag on the runway. All departures/arrivals flights have been suspended at the airport.

    According to the eye-wtinesses, it was with great difficulty that both the pilots were taken out of the crashed chopper. While the senior pilot died on the spot, the co-pilot succumbed to his injuries while taken to a hospital. 

    Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel expressed his grief. “In the tragic incident, both our pilots Captain Panda and Captain Srivastava have died. May God give enough strength to their family members and peace to the departed soul in this time of grief,@ he said in a tweet.

    The airport authorities were reluctant to give any statement over the incident. An officer at the airport not authorised to speak to the media said that it’s a matter of investigation since neither the weather condition nor the night landing facility at the airport can be blamed. “This is the first such incident that occurred during the night. The Director General Civil Aviation and the state government will probe into the incident,” he added.

  • Five years after emergency landing, Bangladesh plane still taking up space at Raipur airport

    Express News Service
    RAIPUR: It’s been over five years for a Bangladesh-based United Airways plane that made an emergency landing at Raipur and the airport authorities apparently seems perplexed as they await feedback to their series of communication sent to officials of the private carrier and the neighbouring country for its take-off from the Chhattisgarh capital.

    Besides the letters and the sequence of e-mails to civil aviation authorities of the neighbouring country Bangladesh, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) Regional Headquarter (RHQ) contacted Bangladesh High Commission in Kolkata on September 2 last year.

    “But so far we haven’t received any concrete response or information from them as the Bangladesh aircraft remains parked since August 2015 and yet to be attended for its take-off. Though, we have been consistent in our communication”, said Rakesh Sahay, the Raipur Airport Director.

    The United Airways flight with 173 passengers on board on its way from Dhaka to Muscat made an emergency landing at Swami Vivekananda Airport in Raipur following a technical snag and failure of one of its engines. Even after the aircraft engineering team from Bangladesh fixed the problem some three years ago, there still is no message from Bangladesh regarding the stranded plane take off from Raipur.

    The aviation authorities told the New Indian Express that they were yet to see any definite action initiated to expedite the process by the officials contacted in Bangladesh for the aircraft to be flown back to Dhaka.

    The parking charges to be paid by the private carrier keep piling up. “The parking fee is Rs 320 per hour. We are pursuing with the operator for payment and for taking away the aircraft,” Sahay said. The parking charges already crossed Rs 1.54 crore.

    With the United Airways aircraft lying solitarily in the allotted parking space and apparently ignored for so long, the Raipur airport had equally faced a space dilemma and had to shift the plane to other locations within the premises.

    The airport officials here are evidently clueless on what recourse the AAI or the Director-General Civil Aviation might initiate as the Bangladesh or private carrier authorities take no notice of the high-priority messages sent to them.

    “Any action to be taken will be in accordance with the respective rules and regulations if the ongoing situation lingers on or fails to make headway,” affirmed Sahay.

  • In the quality survey, Raipur Airport achieved the first position by beating big airports like Mari Baji, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi

    Raipur Airport has again been ranked first in the Airport Quality Survey. Ranked first in Eastern Region.
    The survey was conducted in the Corona period from October 2020 to December 2020.
    Raipur Airport has secured the first position in the Eastern Region, leaving behind big airports like Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi.

  • Inaugural flight of FlyBig lands at Raipur Airport

    Inaugural flight of FlyBig, India’s newest friendly regional airline, which provides connectivity to destinations that were hitherto not accessible by air, landed on the tarmac of Swami Vivekananda Airport (SVA) at 2.50 pm on Wednesday. The inaugural flight (S9101), ATR 72 aircraft, arrived Raipur from Indore received a grand water cannon salute in the presence of Airports Authority of India (AAI) officials manning the airport. Moreover, the passengers of inaugural flight were personally received by Airport Director Rakesh Ranjan Sahay, FlyBig Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Captain Srinivas Rao and Managing Director Sanjay Mandaviya. In all, according to the AAI sources, the inaugural flight (S9101), ATR 72 aircraft, arrived here with 42 passengers whereas the return flight (S9102) departed from here with 48 passengers. “FlyBig plans to operation Indore-Raipur-Indore sector 5 times a week viz. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, wherein, it will arrive at 7:30 a.m. in the morning from Indore and will depart at 8 am for Indore,” the sources added. MLA Kuldeep Juneja and office bearers of Confederation of India Industries (CII) namely Amit Agrawal, Sandeep Goel and Satish Pandey. In the meantime, sources also affirmed that the focus of FlyBig and AAI is to develop smaller airports by boosting regional air services through such services. “Depending on the response, the private airlines, in conjunction with the UDDAN initiative, may also add more destinations in its operations list,” the maintained. It is pertinent here to recall that the private airline had received Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC) from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a regulatory body in the field of Civil Aviation, primarily dealing with safety issues, on December 14, 2020. Hereafter, FlyBig Airlines’ CEO Captain Srinivas Rao on January 6 had also visited Raipur and reviewed the set-up at SVA along with APD Rakesh Ranjan Sahay for Raipur-Indore flight services, which finally commenced on Wednesday.