#Chennai Airport sees flight operation after shutting down for 4 days

CHENNAI: Air India requests Airport officials, Chennai, to allow their operation as the officials announced operation of passenger flights during day time from Sunday.

According to sources on Sunday morning, “Air India has informed us that it will operate a chartered flight to Port Blair and one flight to and fro Chennai today,”

Al-549, Air India flight from Chennai to Port Blair took off at 10 am while Al 429, flying from Delhi arrived at Chennai at 1:40 pm. The same flight also departed at 2: 45 pm to Mumbai. Two more flights are likely to have departed from the airport this evening.

34 aircrafts, belonging to different airlines were held up at the water logged Chennai Airport as the services were shut off until December 6th on account of severe downpour that had made it impossible for the transportation to occur. The Chennai Airport is currently using Indian Air force’s radar as its own was damaged by the flood water.

A makeshift Airport was made at a naval base at Rajali (60 km away from Chennai); to facilitate civilian flight services after the Airport was shut down. The makeshift port was declared to be a safe runway for relief flights and ferry after thorough inspection by respective officials was made.

Complete come-back of flight services will soon occur on a date that will be announced by the aviation regulator DGCA. It has also been tentatively fixed as Tuesday.

Four ferry flights that departed for Delhi, Mumbai and Port Blair on Saturday were parked along with a cargo flight Singcargo B747 that was to depart to Singapore via Bengaluru.

On a daily basis under normal circumstances, Chennai Airport sees about 320 landings and departures. Around 20 international airlines as well as other domestic airlines function from this airport.

Train services also have restarted after a halt of four days. Other transport services that have bounced back to work as rain receded are buses and auto rickshaws.