Plane makes emergency landing in Chandigarh

CHANDIGARH/SHIMLA - A chartered plane made an emergency landing at Chandigarh airport Sunday after a technical snag forced it to abandon scheduled landing at Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and return, Chandigarh airport officials said.

According to the officials, the Saraya Aviation plane took off from Chandigarh airport Sunday morning and was scheduled to land at Shimla airport.

“The plane had reached Shimla but it could not land there as some technical problem developed in the engine. Therefore, it came back and made a safe landing here around 11.30 a.m.,” said an official of Chandigarh airport.

Shimla’s airport controller Anil Goswami said the plane was scheduled to land there but at the last minute the landing was aborted due to some technical snag in the plane.

Officials said landing at Shimla airport, at an altitude of 2,196 metres above the sea level, is a challenging task as it is among the three table-top airports in the country.

The runway is called table top because of the deep gorges surrounding it.

“We have arrangements of fire-fighting at the strip level but the left bank of the airport is unconnected so far…though the night landing facility was commissioned in October last year but no night test flight has been operated so far,” an official said.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal informed the state assembly in March this year that the runway of the Shimla airport has shrunk due to soil erosion and there are plans to restore it.

“The runway of the Shimla airport has shrunk due to soil erosion. Its actual length has been reduced to 3,800 feet from 4,100 feet due to soil erosion,” Dhumal, who also holds the tourism and civil aviation portfolio, said in a written statement in the assembly.

“The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has planned to undertake restoration work so that the effective length of the runway could be restored to the original one,” he said.

Shimla airport is connected to Delhi by regular flights. Kingfisher is the only airline that operates daily flights.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh airport officials said both the pilot and co-pilot of Saraya Aviation plane that returned to Chandigarh from Shimla Sunday are safe.

“Both the pilot and the co-pilot are safe and our engineers are examining the plane to ascertain the problem,” an official at Chandigarh airport said.

“The plane had gone to Shimla to pick up some VIP guests,” he added.