Govt Plans Hyderabad Airport Revival With 11,500-Foot Runway, Eyes Boeing 777s

KARACHI: The Hyderabad Airport revival could end a 13-year absence of scheduled passenger flights, with the Pakistan Airports Authority planning a runway long enough to accommodate Boeing 777 aircraft.

PAA sources put the numbers plainly. Today's strip at Hyderabad Airport runs 7,000 feet; the authority wants 11,500. Karachi, Sukkur and Nawabshah would get a spare airport for bad weather and emergencies, and Karachi would gain an overflow option when its own air traffic backs up.

Big plans for an airport without scheduled passenger service since 2013. They also run straight into a problem nobody has solved yet: land.

PAA Director General Air Vice Marshal Zeeshan Saeed led a delegation to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on September 19. His team raised unresolved land-mutation and encroachment disputes covering roughly 1,473 acres of Hyderabad Airport land, and asked the provincial government for help.

Shah told provincial departments to take up the land issue on priority. Road access and the province's other pending homework went on the same list.

Nobody walked out of that meeting with a construction timeline. No budget figure has surfaced publicly either.

The 1998 hijack connection

Hyderabad Airport carries more history than its empty schedule suggests. This runway ended a hijacking. May 1998: gunmen seized a PIA domestic flight out of Balochistan and ordered the crew to fly to India. The pilots set down at Hyderabad instead. Commandos went in on the tarmac and overpowered the hijackers.

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Commercial life faded in the years that followed. PIA ran the last scheduled service in 2013. After that, anyone in Hyderabad who wanted to fly drove to Karachi first. They still do.

Heavy jets need room. The existing 7,000-foot runway severely limits wide-body operations. Add 4,500 feet and a Boeing 777 becomes possible on paper, if the airport clears the technical and safety bar such aircraft set.

Still, a runway is only part of it. Taxiways, aprons, pavement strength and firefighting cover all have to match. PAA has not yet published those details.

The payoff for Karachi is practical. PAA sources say a diverted flight could land within road reach of Karachi, and passengers could finish the trip by road to the city and other nearby destinations.

The upgrade has a cargo case too. Officials see farm produce and other goods from Hyderabad and surrounding districts moving out by air.

Flights? Not yet

No airline yet. No route, no date. PAA sources said authorities may consult stakeholders about regional domestic flights. That conversation has produced no public commitment so far.

The Hyderabad plan sits inside a bigger Sindh aviation package. The September meeting also covered a proposed greenfield airport at Sukkur and expansion work at Karachi's Jinnah International. It also discussed turning the Civil Aviation Training Institute in Hyderabad into Pakistan's first dedicated aviation university.

The real test

For Hyderabad, the first milestone will not be a 777 touching down. It will be a clean land title. Settle the 1,473 acres first. Until then, 11,500 feet is a drawing. The city of millions keeps driving to Karachi to catch a plane.