ZIA...
Photo: Tanvir Ahmed / Driknews
Apparently, all international standard airports must have two runways. But Zia International, Shah Amanat in Chittagong, and Shahjalal in Sylhet all have one major runway each. Granted that the latter two's international arrival and departures are negligible, but what about Dhaka? We have seen in more than one instance the whole airport becoming dysfunctional when a mishap happens on the runway (Malaysian Airlines some years back, Saudia recently, and our own Biman DC-10 crash landing in Chittagong) for hours a together , creating a ripple effect in the flight traffic in the region. In Zia International, are there any future plans for a second runway to upgrade the airport to international standards? If there are any, how will it affect the high-rises coming up in Uttara in the north and Biswa Road on the south? The government already acquired a substantial amount of land in Kaliakoir earlier this decade for a new airport. Has their been any cost-benefit analysis of the difference in upgrading the existing airport and building a new one from scratch? Common sense dictates in favour of the existing site at ZIA. Another reason ZIA should be retained as an airport is that we don't want another urban tumour within Dhaka in the form of an abandoned airport like Tejgaon, as if in an overpopulated city, we have all these lands to spare creating the obstacles to the east-west traffic flow that the city desperately needs. At the same time, ZIA does have an image problem. After taking off from the super airports of the Middle East or South East Asia, the drab interior of the airport is not very welcome. It lacks the horizontal people movers, making it difficult for the elderly and the children to disembark, and there only one telescopic corridor per aircraft that makes the embarkation and disembarkation a lengthy time consuming process, especially if it's a wide bodied aircraft. The poor lighting, the chaos at the immigration, the pathetic duty free shops, and the last but not the least, the throng of people accosting arriving passengers is not the first impression visitors should get when arriving in Bangladesh.
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