1st emergency landing strip on highway in India; inauguration in Barmer today
1st emergency landing strip on highway in India
Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari will be inaugurating an emergency landing strip at the Gandhav Bhakasar section, on National Highway-925, in Barmer, Rajasthan, on Thursday for Indian Air Force planes (IAF).
An IAF plane with the two ministers in it, will be conducting a mock emergency landing on this national highway. Singh, (the Union defence minister), will also visit Jaisalmer. Here, he will interact with the IAF personnel.This is the first time that a national highway, the NH-925, is going to be used for emergency an landing of an IAF aircraft.
The National Highways Authority of India or NHAI has developed a 3-km section of Satta-Gandhav stretch of NH-925A, as an Emergency Landing Facility (ELF) for the IAF. This is a part of a newly developed 2-lane paved shoulder of Gagariya-Bakhasar and Satta-Gandhav section. It has a total length of 196.97 km. The cost of the project will be ₹765.52 crore, under the Bharatmala Pariyojana.
In October of 2017, fighter jets and transport planes of the IAF, conducted mock landings on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway to prove that such highways can also be used by the IAF planes for landing in cases of emergency.