South-bound flights to take longer this weekend for airspace closure over Bay
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Kolkata: Flights to Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Port Blair from Kolkata as well as return flights on these sectors on Saturday and Sunday morning will take longer due to the closure of airspace over the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea for military exercises and weapon tests.
India announced the closure of airspace over an area around the Andaman & Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea for three hours each on May 24 and May 25 for a planned air activity, and no civilian aircraft will be allowed to use the specified airspace at any altitude, stated the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM).
Controllers in Kolkata, who navigate flights over the Bay of Bengal, will redirect flights from routes over the sea to those over land during the restriction over oceanic airspace from 7 am to 10 am this weekend, leading to an extra 15-20 minutes of flight time for travel from Kolkata to Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and Port Blair.
Instead of flying via Bhubaneswar, flights will be routed via Jamshedpur to avoid the specified airspace that will be shut to civilian flights.
Overflying aircraft between Southeast Asia and Europe will also be offered alternative routes as nine international routes will be closed in that period. "The mornings of Saturday and Sunday will be busy for area controllers in Kolkata," an official said.
According to the NOTAM, the restriction will be on the airspace over a polygonal area around the A&N Islands with a maximum corridor length of around 500 km. The affected altitudes are listed as ground to unlimited, which means that civilian aircraft are not allowed to operate even at very high altitudes in that period.
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