KOLKATA: Passengers travelling through Kolkata airport were in for a surprise on Thursday morning and again in the afternoon when they saw Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets land and take off. They were actually Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs) normally based at Air Force Station Kalaikunda (in the east) leaving or returning from sorties. These aircraft will continue to use Kolkata airport on Friday as well, apart from Andal and four more in the eastern sector.
\nA source in the IAF said that this is an annual exercise during which young pilots receive familiarisation with the workings at busy civil airports. The Hawk trainers are flown by those in their final stage of training before being assigned to fighter squadrons. Though primarily used for training, the AJTs can also be armed and used during combat. In October, 2019, IAF Su-30 MKIs had carried out a similar exercise in Kolkata.
\n\u201cIAF coordinated with the ATC at Kolkata airport to conduct their exercise without affecting scheduled commercial flights. Since the IAF planes have low fuel carrying capacity, the time slots for landing and takeoff were precise to ensure that the planes could land as they flew in. At the same time, we ensured that it was not at a busy hour. So passenger flights didn\u2019t have to hover,\u201d an airport official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KOLKATA: Passengers travelling through Kolkata airport were in for a surprise on Thursday morning and again in the afternoon when they saw Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets land and take off. They were actually Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs) normally based at Air Force Station Kalaikunda (in the east) leaving or returning from sorties. These aircraft will continue to use Kolkata airport on Friday as well, apart from Andal and four more in the eastern sector. A source in the IAF said that this is an annual exercise during which young pilots receive familiarisation with the workings at busy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,130,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation-the-times-of-india","category-newspapers","category-the-times-of-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}