DGCA to approve new taxiway facilities at Bhubaneswar airport soon, BA

Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will soon accord approval to operationalise the parallel taxi track (PTT) and rapid exit taxiway (RET) at Biju Patnaik International Airport here, as work on both has been completed, officials said. Both facilities will ease ground operations.

Once DGCA grants approval, necessary changes will be made in the flight management system (FMS). “A DGCA team will visit the airport to review the completed works. We hope to make them functional as soon as possible,” said airport director Prasanna Pradhan.

The PTT can facilitate directing aircraft from taxiway to runway quickly, ensuring quick movement and less waiting time for passengers. PTT will help free the runway soon after an aircraft lands as it will facilitate rapid exit from the taxiway. “In RET, aircraft can exit the runway and move onto the taxiway after running for around 1,300 metres. The total runway length is 2,744 metres here. Thus, arrivals and departures will be faster,” Pradhan added.

Currently, the airport has just a link taxiway. However, the first phase of PTT (1,318-m-long) is operational now, which is helping handle 15 aircraft per hour. After the full-length PTT is ready, it can handle 20 aircraft per hour. Work on the second phase of PTT (1,566-m long) was completed recently, airport sources said.

Airport officials said the PTT will also be beneficial for the workability of reconfiguring the runway lighting system. In Oct 2023, a state-of-the-art automated air traffic control (ATC) tower and the link building connecting the domestic with the international terminal was inaugurated by chairman of Airports Authority of India (AAI), Sanjeev Kumar.

Now, the new and old ATC towers are running simultaneously. The automation system at the new ATC has been indigenously developed by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) under the Make in India initiative with cutting-edge technology.