Yongphulla Airport (also known as Yonphula Airport) is a domestic airport in

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...

, one of the country's four airports. It is located near Trashigang.

History

The airport was originally constructed by the

Border Roads Organisation The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is a road construction executive force in India that provides support to and is now a part of the Indian Armed Forces. BRO develops and maintains road networks in India's border areas and friendly neighboring ...

in the 1960s. Yongphulla Airport was a simple

airstrip An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

at that time, located high atop mountainous terrain and largely unused. In the early 2000s, the airport was renovated with the aim of becoming a domestic airport. It was completed and inaugurated in December 2011. Six months later it closed for runway surface repairs, after Drukair suspended operations citing safety concerns. During construction, budget constraints had allowed only half of the runway to receive 'patchwork repairs'. The runway had not been resurfaced since the 1960s. When the airport reopened in January 2013, following a complete resurfacing of the runway,

Drukair Drukair Corporation Limited ( dz, འབྲུག་མཁའ་འགྲུལ་ལས་འཛིན།), operating as Drukair — Royal Bhutan Airlines, is the flag carrier of the Kingdom of Bhutan, headquartered in the western dzongkh ...

scheduled flights to Yongphulla remained suspended because of regulatory requirements and further safety concerns. The ATR 42-500 used by Drukair for domestic services, while able to land on the 3.8%

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

runway, was prohibited from doing so in commercial flight operations, as there was a limitation in the aircraft manual of a 2% gradient. Additionally, Drukair highlighted concerns with a 'hump' in the runway, on the grounds that it may cause long-term structural damage to their aircraft. Drukair also asked for the two hillocks on either side of the runway to be removed on the grounds that the airport is prone to strong crosswinds and these represent a hazard to aircraft in such conditions. In 2013 the airport closed to all air traffic, due to the lack of fire service cover and to allow significant structural repairs to the airfield. The airport re-opened on 8 October 2017 after the runway was upgraded to international standards.

Facilities

The airport resides at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § ...

of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value ( magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ...

. It has one

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

designated 12/30 with an

Asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

History

Facilities

Airlines and destinations

See also

References

External links