Overview
The airport is located near Bajpe, around 20 km (12 mi) north-east of the city centre. The airport is located on top of a hill, with two table top runways 9/27 and 6/24. Only two other airports in India have table top runways - Kozhikode and Lengpui. As of October 2012, airport has facilities for handling 400 passengers in the Domestic arrival Hall and 150 international passengers in international hall.
On 28 September 2012 an Airbus A310, a first of aircraft in that class, landed for the first time at the airport, it was a charter flight to fly the Hajj pilgrims to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. On 10 January 2006 an Airbus A319 of Kingfisher Airlines was the first aircraft in that class to land on the new runway. Until 2005, its small 1,600 m (5,249 ft) runway meant that it could only handle Boeing 737-400 sized aircraft the longer runway now handles slightly larger aircraft.
Growth of Passenger traffic at the Mangalore Airport can be gauged by the fact that airport handled 9.29 lakh passengers from July, 2011 to June, 2012 although it was projected to handle 9 lakh passengers in 2025. and in 2010 it handled 8.04 lakh passengers.
In 2007-08 the airport handled 10,019 aircraft movements as compared to 6,268 the previous year.
In 2011-12 it had a revenue of 42 crores and an operating profit of 9.5 crores, up from 83 lakhs in 2006-07. More pictures of Mangalore airport are available now on Facebook.
Read more about this topic: Mangalore Airport (India)