Extension and Conservation
With air traffic congestion reaching an unacceptable threshold in Mumbai, the AAI put its age-old plan of reviving the Juhu airport on the fast track to ease some pressure off of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in 2010. The AAI appointed consulting major KPMG to draw up a development plan for Juhu airport. It was envisioned that the Juhu airstrip could take up to 18% load off CSI Airport with turboprop ATR and Boeing 737 aircraft. The plan was to extend the runway to 2000 meters in phases, this would have ultimately seen the airstrip jutting into the sea and utilizing reclaimed parts of the Juhu beach and seafront, however permission for the same was denied by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Instead, the ministry asked for conservation of the land around the airstrip, stating that no development should take place there and that it should be conserved as a green space to compensate for the pollution caused by the airstrip.
With the New CRZ rules of 2011 permitting roads on stilts in CRZ-I areas (within 100 metres of the shoreline), the AAI decided in January 2012 to pursue its plan to extend the existing runway westwards from the current 1,143 metres to 2,020 metres by building it on stilts over the Juhu-Tara Road and into the sea, involving a capital cost of 2,000 crore.
However, one of the technical problems facing the project is that the current runway is at an elevation of only four metres above the mean sea level. An extension of the runway into the sea would mean having to account for the sea level during high tide. Another major hurdle is that the climb path out of Juhu's main runway 08/26 interferes with operations on CSI Airport's main runway 09/27. The Juhu runway needs to be re-aligned to 09/27 in order to allow simultaneous operations with CSIA's main runway.
Read more about this topic: Juhu Aerodrome
Famous quotes containing the words extension and/or conservation:
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The putting into force of laws which shall secure the conservation of our resources, as far as they may be within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, including the more important work of saving and restoring our forests and the great improvement of waterways, are all proper government functions which must involve large expenditure if properly performed.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)