HYDERABAD-RAJIV GANDHI USING NEW TECHNOLOGY TO RESURFACE ITS MAIN RUNWAY

Hyderabad-Rajiv Gandhi International Airport operator, GIAL, has completed the first phase of the refurbishment of its main runway (09/27) in just 15 days as opposed to the normal timeframe of three months.

It says that the use of new Airport Grade Steel Guard (AGSG) technology to apply a special protective coat to the runway designed to preserve and extend the life of existing asphalt pavement surfaces, made the super quick time possible.

This innovative technology, it says, has a quick-setting feature, which enables the runway to accommodate aircraft movements within just two hours of its application during the day, and 45 minutes in between applications.

Almost a third of the runway has been resurfaced during the first phase of the project, which GIAL reports had “absolutely no impact on airport operations” as all air traffic was simply switched to Hyderabad-Rajiv Gabndhi’s second runway.



Indeed, GIAL insists that as the use of AGSG technology to carry out the work didn’t involve excavation of the pavement, the main runway was fully operational before and after the daily refurbishment work.

Hyderabad International Airport had engaged vendors based in Mumbai and the technology implemented is provided by a US based firm.

GHIAL CEO, SGK Kishore, said: “We have always spearheaded innovation and the adoption of new-age technology. Keeping an eye on advancements in airport technologies globally, we have been adopting new and proven practices to continuously enhance our operational excellence.

“Along similar lines, we have adopted a new, proven and patented Airport Grade Steel Guard technology for preserving our ten year old main runway.



“We believe this technology will extend our runway’s life to meet the future requirement. During the entire project, the airport operations was never impacted as our secondary runway handled all flight operations.”

He added: “The effectiveness of this new cutting-edge technology was rightly experienced during the recent tyre-burst incident of an Indigo Aircraft, wherein not a single portion of the main runway was impacted due to this incident and it could be put into operations immediately after the affected aircraft was removed from the runway.”