Bishnu Rana

 

TEZU, Dec 18: The much-awaited Tezu Airport is expected to be made operational in May 2021 with construction of landing  facilities currently in war footing.

“Works for terminal building, car parking, entrance and exit and other mandatory facilities for smooth functioning of the airport  are going on with momentum,”  officials from the Airport Authority of India (AAI) informed. The strategically important Tezu and Pasighat airports have been given  top priority and special impetus by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. “The ATR, 72-seater plane will  give three days weekly services with scheduled three route Guwahati-Tezu, Tezu-Guwahati-Imphal and Tezu-Guwahati-Rupsi-Kolkata respectively, the sources revealed. "With focus on connectivity of North Eastern Region, UDAN 4.0 scheme under the Ministry of Civil Aviation has invited bids for six underserved and 24 unserved airports/airstrips in the North East states of India," an official release said. The underserved airports and airstrips in the list are at Pasighat and Tezu (Arunachal Pradesh), Jorhat, Rupsi and Tezpur (Assam), and Shillong (Meghalaya). Meanwhile, AAI Tezu Airport officials expressed concern over the delay in  clearance of 4 acres of land allotted to the airport for residential purpose. The authority has pleaded with the District Administration (DA) Lohit to sort out the issue. 

The airport was scheduled to operate in 2019 when a private airline company was allotted the tender, but they showed reluctance to commence operations due to  economic non-viability.