From the cover
IN A STUNNING AND SPEEDY COMEBACK, KOCHI’S AIRPORT RESUMES FULL OPERATIONS AFTER A 15-DAY SHUTDWON DUE TO THE FLOODS
Kochi’s airport resumes full operations UAE airlines resume flights to Kochi
The reopening of Kochi airport yesterday comes as a resounding sign of the state’s ability to bounce back quickly. As many as 38 flights were scheduled for the opening day itself from Cochin International Airport (CIAL), from 2pm to midnight. Before the floods, the airport’s usual schedule was around 100 flights a day.
“Yes, it is going to be a surprise for airlines, passengers and everyone else”, CIAL managing director Vattavayalil Joseph Kurian told Gulf News a few hours before the first flight was to take off from the airport yesterday.
For those who had seen the visuals of the devastation wrought by the floods at the airport, this is a stunning comeback. “But haven’t we always been doing that?” said Kurian, who leads the team that runs Kerala’s best-known privatepublic partnership that has been a consistent profit-earner.
The runway had been under 3 meters of water, the furniture and fittings were submerged, the inventory was flooded, and the signalling systems were affected, but all of that was put back in place in quick time. In all, 3 million sq ft had to be made functional again.
For the few days that the airport was under water, there were limited services from the Kochi naval airport, but from yesterday, all flights moved back to Nedumbassery.
The speed at which the airport was brought back to normal is a new chapter in itself for the airport. “It took us all of eight days. Rebuilding the compound wall itself was a major task; in place of the 2.5km of wall that had collapsed, we had to put up a temporary wall, using tin sheets, with some iron rods and concreting,” says Kurian.
The destruction was widespread: Landing gear, conveyor belts, signalling equipment, electrical fittings and furnishing, all were damaged. Besides that, the solar power generation at the airport, which made CIAL the world’s first fully solar-powered airport, was also damaged.
“Our daily maintenance expenses are in the region of Rs20 million (Dh1.04 million), so one can say that in 14 days we had to spend Rs280 million, with no income generated,” says Kurian.
Most airlines believed Kochi airport would take a long time before it could get flights to operate, and they shifted flights to Thiruvananthapuram or Kozhikode. Some put the opening date for Kochi airport as September 8, others a pessimistic end-September opening.
“Our aim was to get the airport back up and running at the earliest. The school-opening in the Gulf countries is only a few days away, and we wanted to get the airport ready so that the inconvenience to passengers would be minimal”, he says.
Industry estimates say losses due to closure and replacement of equipment could be in the range of Rs3 billion, but Kurian prefers to wait for official figures.