‘Footfall of international passengers up by 50 pc in 2016’

Tribune News Service

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Amritsar, February 3

The footfall of international passengers at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport increased by 50 per cent in 2016 compared to the corresponding period in 2015. From January to November 2016, the number of passengers increased to 4,53,012, which was 2,90,448 in the same period in 2015.

“However, this is not being seen as a big success,” said office-bearers of the Amritsar Vikas Manch (AVM), a city-based NGO.

They rued that neither any political party nor any contesting leader took up the issue of starting more international flights from the local airport. They demanded that Air India and Jet Airways should start non-stop, direct international flights from Amritsar.

They said: “The credit of increasing the footfall goes to new non-stop international flights launched by Malindo, Scoot and Spicejet from the Amritsar airport and continuation of flights by foreign carriers, including Qatar, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan Airlines.”

“However, national carrier Air India has not started any direct flight from Amritsar and continues to connect passengers to international destinations via Delhi,” they said.

They said: “Though a large number of Punjabis are settled abroad, the local airport has no non-stop flights to Europe and North America. A direct flight to Birmingham, London, Frankfurt, Toronto or Vancouver has been a long-pending demand of Punjabis.”

In November 2016, Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani and other officials had stated about the plans of restoring the Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto flight from February 15, 2017.

Now, in reply to a letter by the AVM patron, Dr Charanjit Singh Gumtala, Air India general manager (market planning) Rajneesh Bagga said Air India was in the process of acquiring new aircrafts in 2017-18 and they would share details like station, route and schedule of new flights at an appropriate time.

On January 16, Air India had announced to start new non-stop international flights between Delhi-Washington in July 2017, besides Chandigarh-Bangkok and Delhi-Copenhagen in May 2017.

Dr Gumtala urged political leaders to ensure that schedule of new flights from Amritsar should be maintained.