12:30 am & HAL airport not closed

12:30 am & HAL airport not closed
Bangalore, DHNS:
Even as late as 12:30 am on Saturday, the HAL Airport was still functional, and Banga-lore effectively had two functioning airports, at least for a few hours.

At 12:19 am, a Kingfisher flight from Delhi landed at the old airport and another flight touched down a few minutes earlier from the national capital. Both these aircraft were scheduled to take off for Delhi from the same HAL Airport well past the midnight hour. But when the last international flight to Singapore (Singapore Airlines) took off from the airport at 11:23 pm, a flight of birds took off in the opposite direction. “Looks like the birds too are going to BIA like all the flights from here!” was the humorous remark made by Airport director B C Sena.

Traffic congestion at BIA has resulted in domestic airlines landing at HAL well past the midnight deadline, a top ATC source said.