Almost 200 out of 400 weekly domestic and international flights in and out of Kochi will be severely affected with the airport authorities deciding to close the runway from 10 am to 8 pm every day for seven months starting November this year.
The private airport developer has said the entire runway needs to be recarpeted. The 3,400-metre runway will be developed in small blocks so that aircraft can take off and land outside the no-fly period. No aircraft uses the entire runway to take off and land.
Officials of Cochin International Airport Ltd have already informed over 14 carriers that operate from the airport -- a key centre for migrant workers travelling to West Asia -- of the impending closure.
Kochi accounts for nearly half the total aircraft movement in and out of Kerala. The other airports include Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode (Calicut).
Carriers have started planning to reschedule flights to skirt the "no-fly" time or divert aircraft to other airports.
Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of the national carrier Air India that operates 32 weekly flights from Kochi to destinations like Sharjah, Doha, Bahrain and so on, will have to either reschedule its flights or delay them to an extent.
"We are facing a similar situation in Calicut, where the runway is closed from 10 am to 7 pm for a year now. Most of our flights return the same day so we will have to ground them for a longer time in West Asia, to fit in with the new airport timings, but this will add to the aircraft's operational time," an AI Express executive said.
The ground time at Sharjah might have to be increased by an hour to meet the time schedule, he added.
The airline will also bunch some departures. "We might have to operate three departures in half an hour which will definitely be a constraint on the airport infrastructure," the executive added.
Some domestic carriers like SpiceJet are looking at alternative destinations to operate flights to during the closure.
"We will operate the flights to Thiruvananthapuram instead during the closure period," said a SpiceJet executive. The Delhi-based low-cost carrier has 14 domestic flights from Kochi.
Low-cost carrier Air Deccan is looking at reworking flight routes to fit in with the timings. Sources said it might also have no choice but to cancel some flights.
Similarly, GoAir is rescheduling or cancelling its 14 weekly flights to the airport.
Jet Airways, which has 14 international flights out of Kochi, will have to reschedule all its flights.
"All our flights are in the day, so we will have to reschedule them," said a Jet Airways marketing executive.
The airline also operates more than 70 weekly domestic flights out of Kochi with its low-cost counterpart Jetlite. More than half of these will have to be rescheduled.
Kingfisher, which operates around 90 weekly flights out of Kochi, will have to reschedule more than a third of its flights.
The disruption will also impact the operations of Gulf carriers like Emirates, Kuwait Airways, Etihad Airways, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Al Jazeera, Air Arabia and Qatar, each of which has daily flights ex-Kochi.
The Gulf carriers together operate close to 60 weekly flights out of Kochi.
"Four of our seven flights are early in the morning and will not be affected, but the remaining three will have to be rescheduled," said Neerja Bhatia, country manager, Etihad Airways.
