Pakyong Airport
Pakyong Airport is a greenfield RCS airport at Pakyong town near Gangtok, the state capital of Sikkim, India.
Spread over, the airport is located at Pakyong town about 31km south of Gangtok. At 4646 ft, Pakyong Airport is one of the five highest airports in India. It is also the first greenfield airport constructed in the Northeastern Region of India, the 100th operational airport in India, and the only airport in the state of Sikkim.
Inaugurated on 24 September 2018 by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, commercial flight operations started 4 October 2018. Upon its opening, major media across the globe praised its engineering and described it as one of the most scenic airports in the world. Despite this, commercial flight operations have been hampered by low visibility due to poor weather conditions, being originally planned and designed as a Visual flight rule Airport. Due to these visibility issues along with agitation from the local villagers, strip area issues and inaction by local administration, the airport's only commercial passenger airline SpiceJet stopped flight operations to the airport effective 1 June 2019. A resumption of flight operations has not yet been finalized by SpiceJet.
History
Prior to the construction of Pakyong Airport, Sikkim had been the sole state in India possessing no functional airport. Previously, the nearest airports used to access Sikkim were Bagdogra, located away in the neighboring state of West Bengal, and Paro Airport in Bhutan.The project to develop Pakyong Airport was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in October 2008. The Punj Lloyd Group was awarded the contract to construct a runway, taxiway, apron drainage system, and electrical work for the greenfield airport in January 2009. The foundation stone for the greenfield airport was laid by the then Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel, in February 2009.
The project was initially slated to be completed by 2012, but protests by local villagers, demanding proper rehabilitation and compensation, had resulted in suspension of work in January 2014. The AAI intervened and held discussions with agitating villagers and paid part compensation allowing work to resume in October 2014. However, in January 2015, work came to a halt once again as villagers took to protests. In July 2015, AAI and the State Government signed an MoU with AAI, promising to shift the affected households by 15 August so that AAI could resume work from October 2015. These protest-related delays and landslides upslope of the runway resulted in suspension of work twice, escalating costs from to. Maximally ecological slope-stabilization techniques were used to remedy the landslide situation.
On 5 March 2018, an IAF Dornier 228 landed on the completed airstrip, becoming the first aircraft to land at Pakyong.
SpiceJet had been awarded the Pakyong to Kolkata and Guwahati sectors under the second round of bidding for the Government's UDAN Regional Connectivity Scheme in January 2018
and it conducted a trial landing of its Q400 aircraft at Pakyong on 10 March 2018. The airport received its commercial operating license from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on 5 May 2018.
On 5 December 2019, 35 families affected by the airport's construction signed off on a joint agreement and accepted the first installment in compensation for their loss of land bringing years of protest to a close.
Structure
The airport was built by the AAI at an estimated cost of 605 crore featuring a runway and a long taxiway connecting it to an apron measuring that can accommodate two ATR 72 aircraft at a time.A terminal building measuring with a capacity of 100 passengers, a car park for 80 vehicles and a fire station cum Air Traffic Control Tower was constructed by Ms PABSCON. Navigation facilities include NDB, DVOR, High Intensity Runway Lights, airport beacon, and a PAPI.
The Pakyong Airport project is one of the tallest reinforced soil structures in the world.
The land for the airport was carved from the mountainside using massive geotechnical 'cut and fill' engineering works. These state-of-the-art geogrid soil reinforcement and slope stabilisation techniques were employed as traditional retaining structures and embankments were ruled out as being unfeasible. Italian geotechnical company Maccaferri given consultancy services to execute the project that envisaged a wide, long corridor on which the runway and airport buildings were to be constructed. The company, which completed the project with partners Mott MacDonald and Punj Lloyd, won the 'International Project of the Year' award at the Ground Engineering Awards 2012 for its work in constructing high reinforced soil walls and slopes at the site.
Commercial flight operations
Although initially praised by worldwide media upon its opening as being "a breathtaking piece of engineering on the roof of the world" offering arriving passengers "one of the most dramatic airport approaches on the planet", the airport's commercial flight operations have since been disrupted by poor weather conditions affecting flight visibility. In December 2018, 21 of SpiceJet's 31 daily flights were forced to divert to Bagdogra because Pakyong "lacked the requisite navigation equipment for low-visibility situations", being a Visual flight rule Airport as originally planned as per MOU 2002 & MOU 2015 among Civil Aviation GOI, Tourism Deptt Govt of Sikkim and AAI. Currently, Pakyong requires at least 5km. The Airports Authority of India would like bring this down to at least 2.5km with an instrument landing system, but says area residents were against it. An official in the Sikkim government cited issues that took place during the rainy season when landslides damaged small tracts of agricultural land affecting over 37 land owners of a nearby village uphill area.As of 1 June 2019, SpiceJet, the airport's sole airline providing commercial passenger service, ceased its once daily Kolkata-Pakyong-Kolkata flight due to "unpredictable weather in Pakyong which results in very low visibility", having earlier suspended the other daily service between Pakyong and Guwahati. Airline officials also cited the approaching monsoon season's aggravating effect on flight operations when announcing the service suspension. SpiceJet earlier conveyed that they will restart flight operation with effect from winter schedule i.e, 27 October 2019 but till date SpiceJet have yet not confirmed when they will resume Kolkata- Pakyong -Kolkata.
In addition to fluctuating weather, adequate basic strip area issues have also hampered commercial flight operations. The basic strip, which is mandated to be a minimum of 75 m wide, is only 40 m in western side & 80m wide Eastern side along 2 km long. Contractors have been "unable to take up Civil works to extend the stretch of basic strip and erect a strong RCC Retaining wall with anchoring system" because the State Government of Sikkim at the time had not compensated few of the affected landowners. In 5 December 2019, it was reported that 35 families affected by the airport's construction had been offered a compensation of 20.6 crore by the State Government and that there would be support in ensuring the full completion and operation of the airport.
Military flight operations
As Pakyong Airport sits approximately 60 km from the India-China border, it is considered strategically important. In March 2018, the Indian Air Force was the first to land an aircraft, a Dornier 228, at the airport. And in January 2019, an IAF Antanov-32 transport plane arrived "in an effort to boost the transportation of troops and material to this region." At present security is being provided by State govt. of Sikkim as per MoU dated 30.6.2015 signed among Government of Sikkim, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India and Airports Authority of India.Border disputes have gripped this Himalayan region for decades. The 2017 China–India border standoff took place over the Doklam pass on the tri-junction between China, India and Bhutan, situated roughly 54 km west of Pakyong Airport.