PESHAWAR, Nov 19: The Civil Aviation Authority has selected site for the construction of a new international airport on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

Senior officials said that the CAA’s operational committee and selection board after much ado approved the new site identified near Baddaber, some 16 kilometres southeast of Peshawar.

A summary has been sent to the ministry of defence for final approval, these officials said.

Peshawar International Airport’s manager Zahoor A. Shah said site selection had been finalised, adding some 8,000 acres of land would be acquired for the new airport along the Kohat Road.

Initially, he said, the provincial government had identified 10 sites for the project near the city, of which CAA experts short-listed four sites for the purpose.

After conducting ground and aerial survey, aviation experts declared the site near Baddaber suitable for the new airport, he said.

About the land acquisition, he said, the process would begin once the ministry of defence gave its approval in this regard.

Officials said that despite easy access by comparison with the Baddaber site, one of the sites near the Azakhel area could not be approved for the new airport because of water logging in the area.

Fog, which usually persists in the area along banks of river Kabul, was another factor for rejecting the site, an official said.

Provincial capital requires an international-standard airport as there is a large number of expatriates belonging to the NWFP in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Seven international airlines are presently conducting flights from the city’s airport while flights for Kabul are also being contemplated.

Some foreign companies are already operating wide-body aircraft.

The CAA estimated that the existing Peshawar airport, which was opened for international traffic in 1976, currently handled up to 32 to 35 scheduled flights daily, besides unscheduled flights, including the UN agencies-operated chartered flights.

The quantum of passenger traffic at the airport has reached 700,000 per annum mark.

Officials said that the existing airport, constructed during pre-partition period, had exhausted its capacity to accommodate passengers and air traffic load, therefore, the CAA worked out plan to construct another airport in the provincial capital.