Flight Operations To Remain Suspended For 8 Hrs At Bhubaneswar Airport From Oct 1

Bhubaneswar: Flight operations at Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) here will remain suspended between 11 pm and 7 am every day for around four months from October 1 for the runway re-carpeting work.

The airport re-carpeting work was last taken up in 2007. It is undertaken every 10 years for the smooth operation of the flights.

The work was first scheduled for November 2019, but was postponed to December and then again to February and further delayed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

At present, around 17 flights are operating from the airport. However, international flight services continue to remain suspended.

BPIA Director VV Rao told media that the airport had suffered over 50 per cent loss during the COVID-19 lockdown while the passenger traffic had dropped by 75 per cent.

“The passenger inflow of the airport was higher than the outflow in May and June. The traffic had increased from 9721 in May to 58,953 in June and further to 65,137 in July,” the airport authorities informed.