The runway of Cox’s Bazar Airport, touching the sea-bed, is visible and the construction work of the runway will be completed in this year. It will be the largest runway in the country upon its construction.
According to the Chinese organization in charge of project implementation, the project works will be completed within scheduled time despite facing many obstacles. They hope the planes will do take off and land on the airport touching the sea.
The unique project managing the deep and rough sea is such a work which was not visible in Bangladesh before, even not in South Asia. The passengers of the planes scheduled to fly from and land on the airport will get the feeling of having up from and down on the sea.
In addition to offering such unique feeling to the passengers, the airport will make its place in the list of most eye-catchy airports in the world. The 80% works of the project has been completed.
The manager of runway expansion project of Cox’s Bazar Airport, Lee Guyangchi said, “It was not easy to make runway on seabed. After initiating the project work in 2021, we had to face many challenges. Especially, after the period of Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine war, the time was really hard. However, the work of runway expansion is going on overcoming all the difficulties. The rest of the work will be completed within scheduled time.”
The project stakeholders said the days of going to Cox's Bazar by air only in the presence of sunlight are coming to an end. In a few days, airplanes will take off and land with passengers even at night. Until then, the airport could not operate all types of aircraft due to short runway length and underdeveloped other infrastructure. Therefore, foreign tourists visiting the world's largest single-piece beach had to go to Cox's Bazar via Dhaka. And as a result they had to suffer various kinds of suffering.
In order to eliminate these sufferings, the Civil Aviation Authority adopted a master plan in 2012 to upgrade the Cox's Bazar Airport to an international airport by expanding the runway and terminal building. But due to lack of space, complications arise with runway expansion. In the end, it was decided to make the runway inside the beach to make it eye-catchy.
Finally, after overcoming various obstacles, the grand campaign started in 2021. For this first blocks are constructed under the sea. Embankments are made of concrete to protect against huge tides. Then the structure is being built inside it. This is the first time that a facility is being constructed in this process in the country. According to the project stakeholders, currently the runway length of Cox's Bazar airport is 2.74 km. The new length will be 3.2 km by half a kilometer upon the completion of the expansion process. The spectacular runway will be the first sea-ruled runway in the subcontinent and South Asia. The cost of implementing the project is about Tk 1, 900 crores.
@The report was published in Bengali on print and online versions of The Bangladesh Pratidin on July 28 and rewritten in English by Lutful Hoque
