Air routes to and from Pune have remained disconnected owing to the critical work of runway recarpeting. The airport will be opened on February 27. “Even if the airport will be opened, there will be restricted watch hours as the work will continue. The work will end in May and probably from June 1, Pune will have the airport open for 24 hours,” said Deepak Shastri, director of Pune Airport.

“Already many airline companies have started enquiring about the new international and domestic routes. They want to start the new routes from June. There are enquiries about Aurangabad, Kolkata and Coimbatore along with increase in the frequency of present routes like Delhi, Goa and Bangalore by many airlines. Lufthansa, Emirates, Air India and Jet are also enquiring about some international routes. They will be given slots according to the available timings and other technical conditions,” he said.

Meanwhile, the critical work of recarpeting of runway will end on Tuesday. In the initial stages, the corners of the runway were repaired and that is why some part was available for the take- offs and landings. But now the work of the main part of the runway is going on.

“According to the Air Force officials, this work is almost done and from February 27, we will again have 6,500 feet runway available for the civilian operations,” said Shastri. “The airport will be open from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm. There is no change in timings of the flights and 28 flights will be flown daily,” he said.