Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) has achieved refurbishing work on the 09/27 runway at Indira Gandhi International Airport and handed over the facility to ATC for commercial work late last month, which will help in decreasing the runway work time. The newly rehabilitated runway, which was built during the British period, complies with Category-I (CAT-I) Instrument Landing System (ILS), which helps pilots during landing an aircraft in low visibility conditions, it said. DIAL undertook the rehabilitation work of runway 09/27 (first runway) as part of Delhi Airport's phase 3A development project. DIAL said that it undertook significant rehabilitation works, including milling down the total length of the runway's flexible pavement to a depth of 60 mm and overlaying it with Polymer Modified Bitumen (PMB), which can resist heavy-duty traffic and severe weather conditions. DIAL has successfully finished the rehabilitation work of Runway 09/27 and its taxiways. The British-era runway was rehabilitated and made functional for commercial work as part of DIAL's attempt to boost the infrastructure and passenger experience at Delhi Airport to make it future-ready, as per I Prabhakar Rao, Dy Managing Director, GMR Group. He told the media that the recently rehabilitated runway will have a design life of 20 years and would be crucial in managing the advanced air traffic movements (ATMs) once pre-pandemic level traffic returns to Delhi Airport. Runway 09/27 is on the northern side of Delhi Airport and has a network of nine taxiways, out of which six are linking taxiways, and three are rapid exit taxiways (RETs), DIAL said, adding it has additionally realigned a new 3.5 km-long taxiway, parallel to runway 09/27. It would lower the Runway Occupancy Time (ROT) and help in enhancing the traffic flow. As part of the rehabilitation project, DIAL said it additionally boosted the Airfield Ground Lighting (AGL) system for runway 09/27 with a duct and pit system. Also, all the existing lights of the runway and taxiways (about 850) have been updated to an LED system for higher efficiency and reliability as a part of rehabilitation work, DIAL said. After completion of Phase 3A expansion work, Delhi Airport's passenger managing capacity is likely to boost to 100 million passengers per annum (MPPA), and the airside capacity will increase to manage 140 MPPA. Image Source Also read: Kothagudem airport not listed in UDAN scheme document