Spice Jet conducted a flight trail at Greenfield Pakyong Airport, East Sikkim. The Airport has been non-operational since June 2019.

The non-instrument runway Pakyong airport saw the Instrument approach designed and approved by Directorate General of Civil Aviation as per International Civil Aviation Organization, Aeronautical survey recommendation, executed by M/s Spice Jet carrying out flight trials.

6 trials were made to the runway which was conducted by the Spice Jet flight crew that included Chief Pilot S Sarkar and Vice President Flight Operations, Capt Gurcharan Arora. The Director of Pakyong Airport, Ram Tanu Saha was informed about the successful approach of the trials. If acceptable flight trial reports are received by the Director General of Civil Aviation, Govt of India, it will be published. Implementation of flight operations are expected from 28th January ’21.

Instrument Landing system facility, aids to provide proper landing guidance signals to aircraft. This system is not available at the Airport including three others by Airport Authority of India.

The Runway is non-instrument which is intended for the operation of aircraft that uses a visual approach and instrument approach up to a limit only. Therefore landing of aircraft during bad weather was difficult which resulted in closure and no flights. Pakyong airport is one of the four select tabletop runways operated by Airport Authority of India.