A fighter plane prepares to touch down as Indian Air Force conducts trial on the airstrip of the under-construction Ganga Expressway in Shahjahanpur on Friday
| Photo Credit:
PTI
At a time when India has vowed to avenge terror strike in Pahalgam, a portion of the under-construction 594 km-long Ganga Expressway, which will connect the national capital with Prayagraj, has been designated as the first airstrip allowing day and night landings of IAF aircrafts.
This will add to growing Emergency Landing Facilities (ELFs) on highways across the country, with 28 of them already identified by the IAF till three years ago.
Of them five ELFs are in Assam, four in West Bengal, three each in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, and two each in Bihar, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu. Besides them, one each in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
On Friday, the IAF fighter and transporter aircrafts like Rafale, SU-30 MKI, Jaguar Mirage and C-130J carried out fly pastslanded on a 3.5-kilometre-long airstrip in Shahjahanpur to see the feasibility of the Ganga expressway becoming an alternative runway during war or national emergencies.
The exercise is expected to stretch over to weekend as the ELF will also serve IAF for training and rehearsal.
Two phases
The district administration said the exercise will take place in two phases to check the air strip’s parameters supporting take-off and landing capabilities.
UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inspected the designated strip located near Piru village in the Jalalabad region of Saharanpur on Sunday, which has been taken over by the IAF personnel for facilitating the exercise.
The Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), which is constructing the expressway, was coordinating efforts along with the IAF.
On site arrangements were made for a Mobile Air Traffic Control, Radar Control, Meteorological Facility, Aerospace Safety and Security Control.
Fighter jets performed low fly-pasts, followed by landing and take-off drills. Same sequence will be repeated by aircrafts from 7 PM to 10 PM, local administration officials stated. During the exercise, the Bareilly-Etawah route from Jalalabad to Madanpur remained closed.
On this expressway which is about 80 per cent complete, around 250 CCTV cameras have been installed on both sides for effective real-time monitoring and quick response.
This is the second expressway which will have ELF. In October, 2017, IAF carried out landing operations on a 3 KM-stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway in Bangarmau area of Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh.
Published on May 2, 2025