Kannur: Good news for those who wish to visit Kannur International Airport (KIAL) at Mattannoor here. KIAL has started a daily pass option for visitors.
People can, now, buy Rs100 pass to visit airside areas and with a Rs50-pass they will be able to enter the terminals.
From the airside area once can get an up close view of landing and take off.
When the airport was opened for public, prior to the inauguration, over 3 lakh people visited the place in 10 days.
Kannur International Airport Limited (KIAL), the second greeneld airport set up under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, near Mattannur in Kannur district was inaugurated on December 09.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Union minister Suresh Prabhu jointly inaugurated Kannur airport. The Air India Express to Abu Dhabi is the rst plane to y out of Kannur. All 180 passengers received a gift each from the KIAL.
The airport built in an area of 2,300 acres has all modern passenger amenities.
At present the length of the runway is 3,050 metres and works to extend the length of the runway to 4,000 metres had already began, it was stated. After expansion KIAL will be the biggest airport in Kerala.
The airport has 24 check-in counters, self-baggage drop counters, selfchecking machines and 32 immigration counters. The airport has arrangements to facilitate the landing of big aircraft like Boeing-777. It has bays to park 20 aircraft at a time. Flights that would operate from here includes those to the UAE, Oman, Qatar, besides domestic ones to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai among others. The KIAL is slated to serve more than 1.5 million international passengers annually.
The Kannur airport will be the fourth international airport in the state, the others being in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode. Kannur airport is the second to be built under PPP route after Nedumbassery International Airport at Kochi.
