Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference on Tuesday rued the mess brought about by the cancellation of 42 flights, scheduled to take off from Srinagar Airport over the past few days.
Voicing concern over the hardship faced by the passengers, party senior leader and Former Speaker, Mubarak Gul pointed out the lack of proper navigational aids, lighting, and marking system at Srinagar and Jammu airstrips respectively. “Come winters, and slightest of visibility dips result in hampering air traffic,” he said.
Despite making such a big deal about tourism & investment promotion the administration, Gul contended, is yet to install these requisite visibility aids at these airports. “One can only imagine the plight of those tourists who’ve to sit all day outside the terminal, watching their flights get cancelled. The scenario is very regular at the Srinagar airport. The Parliamentary standing committee had asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to impress upon the IAF to install CAT-II and CAT-III facilities at Srinagar airport at the earliest. But it seems that the concerned agency invested with the management and operations at the airport has turned blind eye to the recommendations,” he added.
Drawing the attention of the government towards the plight of domestic passengers, who are virtually left uncompensated in the event of flight cancellations and delays, Gul said that the affected domestic passenger should not go uncompensated in wake of such eventualities.
