Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Calicut International Airport (VOCL/CCJ) serves the city of Kozhikode in Kerala, India, and is one of the country's few airports built on a table-top runway, cut into a plateau near Karippur in Malappuram district. Operated by the Airports Authority of India and used as an operating base by Air India Express, it is a busy international gateway for the Malabar region with a history shaped by local fundraising, wide-body restrictions and a serious runway-overrun accident.
Calicut International Airport, often called Karipur Airport after its location, is a public international airport operated by the Airports Authority of India serving Kozhikode and the wider Malabar region of Kerala. It is an operating base for Air India Express and is notable as one of the few airports in India built on a table-top runway, a feature that gives it a distinctive and demanding character for any pilot studying the field, whether flying the real aircraft or a simulated one.
The airport lies at Karippur, near Kondotty, in Malappuram district, Kerala, about 28 km from Kozhikode city centre. It is a controlled aerodrome, with air traffic control and ATIS services provided, sitting within Indian domestic airspace serving the Malabar region, which also takes in Malappuram, Wayanad and Palakkad.
The airport has a single physical runway, 10/28, 9,367 ft long with a hard surface, lit, and equipped with ILS. The runway sits on an elevated table-top site, a configuration shared by only a handful of airports in India.
ATIS is broadcast on 127 MHz, and the tower frequency is 122.95 MHz. The field is equipped with ILS to support instrument approaches.
Calicut International Airport was inaugurated on 13 April 1988, following a long campaign for its establishment led by the freedom fighter K. P. Kesava Menon after sanction was given in 1977. In the 1990s, Gulf Malayalis raised funds for the airport's development through the Malabar International Airport Development Society at a time when central government funding was not forthcoming, and loans from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation subsequently financed an extension of the runway from 6,000 feet to around 9,000 feet to allow larger aircraft to operate. The airport was granted international status on 2 February 2006, prompting further development of its infrastructure. From 1 May 2015 the Airports Authority of India temporarily restricted wide-body aircraft such as the Boeing 777 and 747 for six months while the runway was recarpeted, during which some services moved to Cochin. Following representations from Malayali associations, political parties and the Kerala state government, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation approved the resumption of wide-body operations in August 2018, and Saudia became the first carrier to operate an Airbus A330-300 into Calicut from Jeddah on 5 December 2018, later followed by further wide-body approvals for Air India and other carriers. On 7 August 2020, Air India Express Flight 1344, a repatriation flight from Dubai, overran the table-top runway in bad weather and crashed into the slope beyond it, killing 21 passengers; wide-body aircraft were banned from the airport as a result.
Calicut International Airport continues to operate as a busy international gateway for the Malabar region and remains an operating base for Air India Express. Following the August 2020 accident, wide-body aircraft are no longer permitted to operate into the airport, and as of recent years runway safety area works and land acquisition for further development have been ongoing. The airport's table-top runway and its history of wide-body restrictions make it a field of particular interest to pilots studying its approach and runway characteristics.