E-Paper
Defence officials ok plot of land for Pune Lohegaon airport cargo use: Bapat
Transfer of the land came to a conclusion after BJP MP Girish Bapat met with defence officials and officials of the airport authority of India in Delhi recently
Pune’s Lohegaon airport will soon get control of a long-pending stretch of defence land bordering the airport.
This will be used to expand the airport’s cargo facility.
The transfer of the land came to a conclusion after BJP MP Girish Bapat met with defence officials and officials of the airport authority of India in Delhi recently.
A written order is expected in the coming days said Bapat.
Bapat said, “Yes we are expecting the transfer of land in the next 8-10 days. After multiple follow ups, we will finally get hold of the land as the defence ministry has given an in-principle approval for the same. The decision was taken at the meeting which took place in Delhi between myself, Airport Authority of India officials and Indian Airforce officials. The airforce needs a piece of land which the Airport authority owns in Chandigarh and in exchange the air force will hand over their Pune land to the airport authority.”
The piece of land which is currently in possession of the Indian Air Force is the BSO Yard and CWE office land, spread across 8.5 acres and 2.5 acres, respectively.
The land will now be used for the cargo needs of the airport. During a meeting with the Airport Advisory committee, Pune Airport Director Kuldeep Singh had said that due to the absence of this land, cargo facilities could not be expanded and so the city and airport are facing huge losses.
Girish Bapat is also the chairman of the airport advisory committee.
As of now due to the re-carpeting work, the flight operation timings have been limited to only 12 hours from 8 am to 8 pm. Currently about 70 flights arrival and departures which was 170-175 flights being operated at the airport daily.
Kuldeep Singh during an earlier interaction had said, “Currently the Pune airport has a cargo capacity of about 150 tonnes in shipment daily which could be escalated to a much higher capacity. Sky is the limit.”
