Pakyong , 23 Jan : 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 now good news is that after almost 18 months of halt the airport authority of India has scored over issues which includes installation of alternative instrumental landing system called Required Navigation Perfomance.
Required Navigation Performance (RNP) is a family of navigation specifications under Performance Based Navigation (PBN) which permit the operation of aircraft along a precise flight path with a high level of accuracy and the ability to determine aircraft position with both accuracy and integrity.
Today , Spicejet passanger flight Bombardier Q 400 took off from Delhi Airport around 9:45 AM touched down at Pakyong airport ar around 12:10 PM.
This was a historic moment after big wait since June 2019, with help of RNP now visibility issue has been reduced from 5.4 Km to 2.4 Km which is tremendous progress.
According to flight captain A Arora who spoke with The Voice Of Sikkim , he told that now gone those days when visibility issue caused hinderance to flights. According to him it took almost 13 months to simulate flight in all possible ways to tackle issue after which RNP turned to be most viable one.
Now there shall be no issue of flight cancellation due to bad weather and visibility.
In today’s maiden flight which boarded to and fro were 57 crew from Delhi and 21 from Pakyong.
In special maiden flight event today State Health Dept Minister Dr MK Sharma was Chief Guest followed by Guest of Honour Area MLA cum STDC chairman Bishnu Khatiwara. Today’s event was also graced by officials of Airport Authority of India AAI representative Spicejet Airline , Sikkim Tourism and Civil Aviation Principle Secretray K Jayakumar , Line Department Officials , local dignitaries.
Immediately from first week of February Kolkata trip will also resume said sources which was abandoned since 1 June 2019.
Pakyong Table Top Airport is 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. Private airline Spicejet is solely providing flight service in their 80 seater Bombardier Q 400
