The newly-inaugurated Mopa greenfield international airport in north Goa has the capacity to handle the extra large wide-body jet aircraft like an Airbus A380, the Airport management said.
The first phase of the Mopa airport, named the Manohar International Airport, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday evening.
In a white paper released after the inauguration of the facility, the GMR Goa International Airport Management stated the airport’s primary runway is 3,500 metres long and 60 metres wide.
“The runway is oriented due east-west. A full-length parallel taxiway of 3,500 m is built with 225 m in the separation of the runway,” it said adding the runway is equipped to handle even extra-large wide-bodied jets like an Airbus A380.
The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest passenger airliner and the only full-length double-deck jet airliner.
The airport also has two rapid exit taxiways and six cross taxiways for aircraft circulation to avoid congestion.
The apron area of 51,300 sq. meters the airport has five contact stands and seven remote stands and two stands in the authority apron.
“Out of which five are passenger boarding bridges (PBBs) or aerobridges and the remaining nine are remote parking bays. It will also allow night parking of aircraft. Going forward, all these facilities are expandable to meet the market demand,” it said.
The Passenger Terminal Building is built on 67,726 sq. meters comprising 18 check-in counters along with four Self Baggage Drop (SBD), an advanced baggage handling system, and other amenities and utilities, which could cater to 33 million passengers at its peak.
The world-class cargo facilities comprising 25,000 tonnes of temperature-controlled cargo handling capacity have the potential to become an ideal hub for exports from Goa, southern Maharashtra and Karnataka, it said.
The cargo terminal will not only help airlines tap into lucrative revenue opportunities but will also open up new avenues for employment generation and contribute to the state’s GDP.
A senior official had said flight operations from Mopa airport will start from January 5 next year.
The first phase of the airport will cater to around 4.4 million passengers per annum (MPPA), which can be expanded to a saturation capacity of 33 MPPA, he said.
The Mopa airport has been built on the theme of sustainable infrastructure and has a solar power plant, green buildings, LED lights on the runway, rainwater harvesting, state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant with recycling facilities, among other such facilities.
It has adopted some of the best-in-class technologies like 3-D Monolithic Precast buildings, StabilRoad, Robomatic Hollow precast walls, and 5G compatible IT infrastructure, the official had said.