A small yet significant news caught my attention the other day. On November 30, 2007, Sialkot International Airport got its inaugural commercial flight. Pakistan thus adds one more feather in its infrastructure development. The IATA designation of this airport is SKT. It is now the 45th public airport/air strip in Pakistan. There was an inaugural Boeing 737, PIA flight from Karachi the same day, which landed at Sialkot International Airport with 118 passengers. Currently the only flights available to and from Sialkot are from Karachi but very soon Sialkot will get direct overseas flights.
Sialkot International Airport has been built by the local business community on a “self-help basis†at a cost of US $33 million. Sialkot is very fortunate in a sense that local business community plays a vital role in its development. To build, own and operate this airport a company was established in 2001. It is called the Sialkot International Airport Limited (SIAL).
SIAL is a company with 223 directors, each of which has invested Rs 5m of capital in the project as the primary investment. Each of the directors was invited to take part in the project because of their previous experience of running sizeable and successful enterprises.
In order to construct the new airport SIAL contracted NESPAK to develop the master plan and after much deliberation and consultation over two years a fully integrated plan was finalised and approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Sialkot International Airport is located 14 km west of Sialkot and is spread over an area of 1050 acres. It also has the longest commercial runway in Pakistan. The runway length is 3.6 km and width is 45m with 7.5m wide shoulders on either side. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has graded this runway as 4E.
The Link Taxiway is 263-meter long, 23-meter wide with 10.5-meter shoulders. The apron covers an area of 45000 sq meters and the airport can nose-in park four Boeing 747s simultaneously.
The construction of the airport was approved in 2001, the construction work started in January 2003 and on March 26, 2005 the first ever plane landed here.
Following image shows convenient road distances from different cities which are projected to benefit from Sialkot International Airport.
10 km west of the airport flows river Chenab and currently there is a bridge called Shahbazpur Bridge under construction there. Once completed, the bridge will reduce the distance between the cities located at either side of the river. It will provide an easy access to the whole region including Sialkot International Airport, Sambrial Dry Port, Export Processing Zone Sialkot and the industries of Sialkot. It will help the airport to become a gateway for the people of Gujrat, Kharian, Lalamusa, Jhelum and Azad Kashmir. The work on this bridge started in 2005 and is expected to be ready in 2008.
Once the overseas flights start from Sialkot, it will become Pakistan’s 9th International airport. Current International Airports of Pakistan are:
1. Jinnah International Airport Karachi (KHI),
2. Allama Iqbal International Airport Lahore (LHE),
3. Islamabad International Airport (ISB),
4. Peshawar International Airport (PEW),
5. Quetta International Airport (QET),
6. Shaikh Zayed International Airport Rahimyar Khan (RYK),
7. Gwadar International Airport (GWD), and
8. Turbat International Airport (TUK).
References:
1. Sialkot International Airport Limited (SIAL)
2. NESPAK
I want to congradulate sialkot’s business community for the success of such a huge project.It looks a dream came true.Now everybody needs to keep it away from administrative or official malpracticing.May Allah succeed you all in future.Aamin.
hello every body from Sialkot
i am in london when i listen that sialkot international airport is ready for landing and take off. so i am very very happy and say (sialkot tou zinda rahay gaa) then i proud to sialkot.
Shakeel ahmed
Hello PIA,
I would like to congratulate you on starting the first ever direct flight to Sialkot International Airport. I think this will be the first step towards a many more routes and bring Sialkot on the map of the air travelers. Now you should support Sialkot International Airport by introducing even more direct or connected flights. PIA should also introduce a vacation package to Sialkot-Skurdu and other vacation destination cities. Sialkot is a industrialist city and there are several hundred rich people lives there and I think if PIA spend some money on marketing such as TV commercials, News paper ads and other means return on investment could be huge. Also PIA should establish state of the art booking office and other facilities in Sialkot and take advantage of the work force and set up some training hub in the Sialkot City. Once again congratulations and keep up the good news we have very high expectations from PIA and its subsidiaries. thanks
RE:
Thank you for your detailed comments sialkot detailed history , good reading., some i knew some more i learned.
Rafay K:
Though i was born there(sialkot) i am not from there. My father was posted to sialkot a total of 11 times in 34 years of military service. But i quite like my association to sialkot, i always have, my older sister was born on the 9th nov.-iqbal day- so she would always joke that her birthday is a national holiday. My only counter, in that brother sister one uppance, used to be that i shared his-iqbal-birthdplace.
Thank you for sharing your story with us, i hope you can get access of some sorts to those documents…you must get after the museam and maybe they will relent…you must pursue it..good luck too.
Sufi Risala,: Used to be a monthly publication published by sufi mohammad din, Iqbal served as its writer and editor for a year or so. The magazine went out of print when sufi m. din’s son returned from cambridge univ. and went to work for the magazine. His ideas of translating shakespeare and other european writer deviated from the sufi aspect of the magazine. Anyways, sufi m.deen, also wrote a book called zikr-e-habib. thats all i know. It would be great to get a hold of one of issues of sufi risala.
Ibn-e-Khaldun refers to AlQushayri who says:
There are only two flights per week from and to Sialkot each week. Its a start but it has to go a long long way before this airport can really start delivering dividends for Pakistan in general and Sialkot in particular. But where there is demand there is supply. The fact that the private sector has taken the initiative might be indicative of some demand there, which might increase in years to come. But still Sialkot is a small city with a population of less than 0.5 million and is not too far from Lahore. So I wonder if the SIAL would remain a small airport, which can’t match any big airports. But projections are that air traffic would increase many fold in the coming decades the world over. That would bring down the prices of aircrafts and would reduce travel costs. Also Sialkot has a number of relatively rich investors and there is expected to be marked increase in the high-speed luxury class small aircrafts with 10-20 seats in the next few years. Sialkot might become a good market for such smaller aircrafts that basically cater to the needs of the rich.