Five airports go international

The Central government has given five airports in the country – Lucknow, Varanasi, Coimbatore, Mangalore and Tiruchirapalli –international status. These five airports have the requisite infrastructure such as immigration and customs facilities, larger terminals to facilitate international operations. All other infrastructure facilities such as aerobridges, the required runway length to accommodate large aircraft needed for international operations, navigational & visual aids including CAT-l and Instrument Landing System (ILS) have been installed at the airports. The airports can handle medium capacity long range aircraft and have facilities for night landing of aircraft. All the five airports already handle at least one international flight.