Chennai: At a time people severely affected by floods in city frantically trying to go to other metros by any means, as many as 18 aircraft took off from Chennai airport on Saturday, but all empty. Various airlines had shifted their flights, anchored in floods for the last four days, to safer airports and also to do maintenance work.
The Chennai airport which was paralysed due to Adyar river floods and subsequent power black out, is expected to restart it's operation on December 8, airport sources said. Air India had sent it's four aircraft to Mumbai, Delhi and Port Blair while other 14 private aircraft were sent to cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.
The airline executives are worried because they can't carry out any maintenance work in the airport, which has no power since Thursday. All those planes had experienced the fury of the flood and unless attended to immediately the performance of those aircraft would be affected.
It is also make business sense to keep the aircraft in airports, which are operational rather than in shutdown airport like Chennai added airport sources.
Currently only aircrafts used by NDRF and defence for relief works are landing in Chennai.
”The power black out was due to the flooding of under ground electricity control hub. It will certainly take some time to normalise power supply," airport sources added.
