Calicut International Airport

Calicut International Airport (code CCJ) is the second-largest airport in Kerala — serving Kozhikode (formerly Calicut) and the Malabar region. The airport is operationally significant as one of India's three 'tabletop' airports — runways built on plateau-top sites with steep drops on both sides (the others are Mangalore and Lengpui in Mizoram).

The tabletop configuration creates serious operational safety challenges: any runway excursion (overshoot or hard landing) can result in the aircraft falling off the cliff edge. This vulnerability was tragically demonstrated by the August 2020 Air India Express Flight 1344 crash, where a 737-800 returning from Dubai overshot the wet runway during heavy monsoon rain and broke up after falling off the tabletop edge — killing 21 of 190 onboard.

Following the crash, DGCA mandated an Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS) installation at the runway end + restrictions on wet-runway landing weights for tabletop airports. The Calicut airport runway was extended by 250 m (2022) to provide additional safety margin.

The airport handles ~1.5 million passengers/year — a major Gulf-India migrant route. Operational restrictions following the crash have somewhat reduced wide-body wet-runway operations, leading to capacity constraints during the southwest monsoon period.