Shillong Sept 3: Baljek airport in West Garo Hills district may soon get a new lease of life with the state government and Airport Authority of India (AAI) working out plans to make it operational.

Chief Minister, Conrad K. Sangma along with officials of the Airport Authority of India (AAI) in the presence of Home Minister, James K. Sangma, advisor to the chief minister, Thomas A. Sangma and state transport officials inspected the airport and discussed about measures to speed up intervention to make the airport operational.

The chief minister said that an objective of the inspection was to make Baljek airport operationalize.

He informed that the there is a process of handing over the airport to the AAI while hoping that chopper service will be operationalized and extension of run way will follow to allow more aircrafts to land in future.

Sanjeev Jindal, the Regional Executive Director of AAI, said that Garo Hills has lot of potential in agriculture, and tourism.

“If the airport is given to us, we will take over and work out how we can first develop for chopper service, and then for Dornier or may be ATR aircraft under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS),” Jindal said.

At present, no scheduled commercial air service is available at the Baljek Airport.

Baljek airport is about 33km from Tura, the district headquarters of West Garo Hills district

The 3,300 feet runway of Baljek airport will be extended by another 1,200 feet. Around 58 acres of additional land was acquired at Rs 2.58 crore for the expansion of the airport.