Development at Jaffna Palaly Airport to begin

Development activities to transform the Jaffna Palaly Airport to a regional airport will begin today under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at the Palaly Airport.

The main objective of the project is to commence flights from Palaly to India from the first week of August. Flight destinations will be Mumbai, Hyderabad, Cochin and Bangalore.

A total of Rs. 2,250 million will be spent on the project, of which Rs. 300 million has been provided as a donation by the Government of India.

The project is expected to commence under three phases.

Under the first phase the first 950m of the runway which is currently being used by the Air Force, will be renovated.

Thereby the Civil Aviation Authority stated after renovations, a 72 seat Bombardier 100 type aircraft will be able to both land and take off from the airport.

The second phase will conclude with the extension of the said runway up to 1.5 Km.After its completion aircrafts will be capable of flying a total area of 1800km2 around the runway.

In the final phase of the project the runway will be further extended to a total length of 2.3km and will be fully completed.

After its completion the Civil Aviation Authority said LL320 and LL321 planes will be able to land and take off at the airport.