Lord Shiva Shortens Runway

Lord Shiva Shortens Runway

NEW DELHI: The authorities that built the third runway at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport claim it's India's longest - but it's a
credit that remains on paper because of a curious problem.

For all practical purposes, the runway is today India's seventh longest, as almost a quarter of it is unusable. The IGI's new runway, rechristened (29/11), is touted as India's longest airstrip (4,430 metres). But an obstruction created by a 62-feet idol of Lord Shiva facing its landing approach in the east renders over a kilometre of the runway stretch unusable.

This makes the usable stretch shortened to 3,400 metres - making the runway shorter than airstrips in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, in three other metros - Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai - and Delhi's own second runway and a little ahead of the Kochi airstrip