Mandi Airport is a proposed
greenfield
Greenfield or Greenfields may refer to:
Engineering and Business
* Greenfield agreement, an employment agreement for a new organisation
* Greenfield investment, the investment in a structure in an area where no previous facilities exist
* Greenf ...
airport to be built at Nag Chala
in
Mandi District in the
Indian
state of
Himachal Pradesh. The airport will be built on a total of 698 acres.
The
Airports Authority of India
The Airports Authority of India, or AAI, is a public sector enterprise under the ownership of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. It is responsible for creating, upgrading, maintaining, and managing civil aviation infrastruct ...
(AAI) gave its clearance for the airport after visiting the site in May 2018.
In August 2019, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister
Jai Ram Thakur
Jai Ram Thakur (born 6 January 1965) is an Indian politician, and was the Chief Minister of the state of Himachal Pradesh from 2017 to 2022. He is a five-time MLA in the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly, winning continuously since 1998 an ...
requested the
Fifteenth Finance Commission for a special purpose grant of Rs 2,000 crore towards construction of the airport for operation of
wide-body aircraft. The AAI completed its Obstacle Limitation Surfaces survey for the project site in August 2019.
The
Ministry of Civil Aviation gave in-principle approval for the execution of the project with the help of the AAI in October 2019.
In January 2020, AAI signed a
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Himachal Pradesh Government to build and operate the airport through a
Joint Venture Company. The airport will have a unidirectional runway, suitable for operation of aircraft up to
ATR 72 initially.
has been appointed as project consultant and has floated tenders for
environmental impact assessment
Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the term "environmental imp ...
for the project
following a site visit in July 2020.
The Himachal Pradesh government had first proposed an international greenfield airport in the Balh valley of Mandi district to the
Union Civil Aviation ministry in 2008.
Since the existing airports in the state at
Kullu,
Kangra and
Shimla were only capable of handling small aircraft, the State government was keen to develop a bigger airport at
Sundar Nagar that could cater to bigger aircraft and had offered land for the project.
References
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Airports in Himachal Pradesh
Proposed airports in Himachal Pradesh