DGCA starts Licensing inspection at Kannur airport

Kannur: A team of officials of the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) began a two-day pre-aerodrome licensing inspection at the Kannur international airport here on Tuesday.

The team is led by Deputy Director of DGCS Santhanam Sampath and Joint Director Aswin Kumar. Officials of the technical department of the airport accompanied the delegaton.

Kannur International Airport Ltd. (KIAL) officials said the DGCA officials from the Aerodrome Standards Directorate visited the airside operational area of the airport and inspected various equipment signage, among other facilities. The inspection would continue on Wednesday.

The DGCA would carry out an overall inspection of the airport, including aerodrome safety inspection, DGCA-ICAO standards inspection, site inspection and confirmation of aerodrome data, among others, the KIAL said. The DGCA licence is the final approval required for the airport to commence operations which is expected to be issued within two weeks if everything goes fine.

Pre-requisites such as immigration clearance, customs declaration, IMD weather systems commissioning and the calibration of the Doppler Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Range (DVOR) Radar had been completed, it added.

KIAL sources said trial landing using a bigger passenger aircraft would be held on Thursday morning.

In the special circumstances of the state, the team will also study the chances of natural calamities affecting the airport.

It is hoped that if things move according to the current schedule, the airport can start commercial operation in November.