Prime Minister to Inaugurate New Islamabad Airport in August 2017

As we all know that the inauguration of the New Islamabad Airport has been delayed a number of times in the past due to a number of reasons such as mismanagement, incompetence, lack of funds and improper planning. There are also a lot more issues that kept the airport from becoming functional but here we have learnt that the facility is soon going to be operational.

The New Islamabad Airport is expected to be completed by the mid of this year with revised estimated cost of Rs82 billion. It is also learnt that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will inaugurate this state of the art project on August 14, 2017. "Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will inaugurate this gift for the nation on 70th Independence Day by inaugurating the New Islamabad International Airport. The work on this airport will be completed by end July and the premier has decided to inaugurate it on August 14, 2017," Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal briefed the media during his visit to the site to review the pace of development work.

Discussing about the project, the Federal Minister explained that the New Islamabad Airport is designed to be in line with the best international standards. Therefore, the PML-N government decided to keep the same old number of bridges in the new design, which were previously reduced from 15 to 9 in Musharraf regime and became the actual reason of price escalation from Rs32 billion to Rs82 billion.

"All international standards facilities including air controlling tower and mechanism for landing in case of severe fog have been placed into this airport. The runway and other facilities are up to required international standards," he added. Physical work is almost completed but the renovation work is still underway to make this facility fully functional.

Two link roads – one from Motorway and another one – are still under construction but are expected to be completed in next few months. Two dams were under construction which would be filled with monsoon rainfalls while Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also conducted 11 bores to dig out water for meeting requirements of the airport. And the requirements of electricity and gas would also be fulfilled for the upcoming airport.