Three airports in the Northeast are among the 14 airports across the country which does not have night landing facility.
Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh, Shillong in Meghalaya and Pakyong in Sikkim does not have night landing facility.
Official statistics in possession of Northeast Now indicates that airports in all other states in the Northeast have night landing facility.
“The provision of night landing facility at an airport depends upon operational requirements, traffic demand, commercial feasibility and vary from airport to airport in the country,” said an official in the ministry of civil aviation.
However, at the airports which does not have night landing facility, the qualified meteorological personnel of India Meteorological Department (IMD) provide the visibility measures.
“No aircraft is permitted to land at night at an airport which does not have night landing facility and the flight operations are permitted during VFR (Day) conditions only,” the official said.
Image : Northeast Now
The reporting of measured visibility does not depend on visual capacity of individual ATC officers.
“The visibility is measured and reported to ATC officers by qualified meteorological personnel of IMD. However, at present 20 airports are equipped with the state of the art visibility sensors,” said officials.
Airpots of the Airport Authority of India (AAI) including Cudappah in Andra Pradesh, Diu in Daman and Diu, Kandla in Gujarat, Dharmasala, Kulu and Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, Agatti in Lakshadweep, Kolhapur in Maharastra, Ludhiana in Punjab, Puducherry in Puducherry, Kishangarh in Rajasthan, Salem and Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu and Pantnagar in Uttarakhand are also not equipped with night landing facility.