The mystery of Gaya airport

Gaya is the only international airport in Bihar. The airport attracts over one million foreign tourists, mostly Buddhists from South East Asia.

Yet, the airport closes at sundown despite having a night landing facility. (Between October and December, the district administration had forced the airport to operate flights at night for Haj traffic to Mecca.)

Airline operators and the local administration say the night landing facilities mostly remain inoperative, as they were on April 24, when this correspondent visited Gaya. The reason is a mystery.

“I cannot comment about the reasons. But, night landing has been a problem area for long,” confirms Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, district magistrate of Gaya.

Airline sources say unofficially the airport authority cites theft of equipment as the reason.

Directorate General of Civil Aviation guidelines required the airport to have guiding lights on four hills facing the airport. Lakhs were spent on putting these lights up. But, they were “stolen”. That’s not all, some solar equipment was said to have been stolen from the airport last week.

Gaya airport director S Biswas refused to comment.

Airports Authority (AAI) spokesperson GS Bawa also said he does not know the reason for this state of affairs. But he confirms: “Theft cannot be the reason (for not having flights land at night).” Bawa insisted the country is able enough to protect important installations such as airports.

A nexus? While authorities in either Bihar and Delhi are tightlipped, airline sources point at a possible nexus. “Keeping the night landing operative would mean additional responsibilities for airport authorities and central security forces, who now happily go home at sundown,” said a senior official at a major airline.

A sources in the district administration echoed this view. “We anticipate there is a nexus working. However, since the airport is a central property, we cannot poke our nose into it,” a senior State official told BusinessLine .

The brunt is borne by the travellers, especially visitors from abroad, for whom Bodh Gaya is a pilgrimage centre, one that brings much needed foreign currency to India.

Buddhist pilgrim centre In the peak season, Gaya operates daily flights to overseas Buddhist destinations like Colombo, Bangkok and Yangon. Scheduled flights apart it also receives chartered carriers from places like Japan.

The traffic is exceptionally high from Myanmar, India’s immediate neighbour. Between October and March Gaya airport receives two flights from Yangon a day.

On April 24, the Air India flight from Yangon, carrying 85 passengers, was diverted to Kolkata, the next scheduled stop, due to bad weather. The weather improved but lack of night landing facilities prevented further flights.

Air India suffered loss as it had to run an extra flight on April 25 from Kolkata to Gaya. Some 14 foreigners, who were scheduled to take the April 24 flight to Kolkata for an onward journey to Bangkok, were stranded.

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