Mangaluru : The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has commissioned two more aircraft parking bays at the international airport here. With this, eight aircraft can be parked at the airport at a time instead of the six earlier, according to J.T. Radhakrishna, director of the airport.

The new parking bays have been constructed at a cost of ₹ 4 crore, he said in a release. The director said that many a time, flights were held up or delayed for about five minutes to 10 minutes due to non-availability of parking bays during peak hours. With the commissioning of the new bays, the waiting time for aircraft has been reduced. The AAI is also planning to build four more parking bays in the airport next year at a cost of ₹ 8 crore, he said. Passenger traffic at the airport went up by 4.21 % in one year, from 16.76 lakh during 2015-16 to 17.46 lakh in 2016-17. Now, the new parking bays would further improve the performance of the airport in view of four new flights being introduced by IndiGo next month. Of them, three flights would be introduced on May 1 and the other on May 15, he said.