TURBULENT PAST

The Delhi-Shimla flight service was suspended on September 16, 2012, when Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines was grounded. Since then, the airport was being used for unscheduled and army flights. The army’s training command or ARTRAC is headquartered in Shimla The airport has a runway of 1,100 metres. In 2012, a portion of it sank due to soil erosion, reducing the length by 200 metres. The AAI spent Rs 100 crore to restore the runway at Himachal Pradesh’s first airport. The full length landing strip was thrown open in December 2015 Though unscheduled flights between Shimla and Delhi resumed soon after December 2015, air carriers were not keen to resume commercial operations as it isn’t a financially viable route