PANJIM: The Navy maintained its position on the closure of the airport on Saturday and Sunday for four hours each day to conduct maintenance, refusing to give up a day during the week to conduct the work or conduct maintenance in the night. This follows a meeting with Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) officials to try and work out a mutually satisfying solution.
TTAG president Savio Messias said, “The Navy is not willing to concede a day in their operations from Monday to Friday. We have suggested that they conduct maintenance possibly on a Saturday or a Sunday and finish it off in six hours. We hope they agree. Yes of course there are a lot of technical conditions which will apply. We will be having another meeting on May 10 with the Navy and the Airport Authorities to ensure it all falls in line.”
These operating conditions are important given that the new season would be affected if the two-day restriction remained. The weekends usually witness a glut of charter flights landing from all over the world.
The facilities at the airport are very restricted given that it can handle eight narrow aircrafts and two widebodied craft at a time. All charter aircrafts are wide bodied. Dabolim airport usually services 16 flights in four hours at night but during the rush hour, when charter flights land, around 15 flights land in an hour stretching facilities.
