Thursday
26th Dec 2024
Dhivehi Edition
New fuel farm at VIA, Photo: TMJ
The new fuel farm at Velana International Airport (VIA) will be opened within the next two months, Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL) Managing Director, Ibrahim Shareef Mohamed said.
The new runway was built under the Velana Airport Development Project by the former President Abdullah Yameen's government.
A fuel farm with a storage capacity of 45 million liters has also been installed, but it has not been put into operation.
In a program broadcast on 'Sangu TV' yesterday, the Managing Director of MACL said that the fuel farm has been unused for quite some time and therefore the operationalization of the facility has now started.
“We have already made efforts to operationalize the facility and hopefully within the next two months,” he said.
With that, ships will not have to wait to refuel during the tourism super peak or high demand periods, as large quantities of fuel will be brought and service will be sped up, he said.
To further speed up airport services, the state-of-the-art hydrant fuel system for aircraft refueling began testing last November. The system will allow wide-body aircraft to refuel in 15 minutes, which currently takes an hour, and will reduce the number of employees required to refuel.