Domestic flights to start from second week of October

Akash Ghai

Tribune News Service

Mohali, September 12

The civil air international terminal (Mohali side), which was inaugurated yesterday, will start facilitating all domestic flights from the second week of October.

Hence forth, the Chandigarh Airport (Chandigarh side) will be closed completely for public use. Then all passengers will have to go to the new terminal (from Mohali side) to catch their respective flights.

A senior official of the Chandigarh Airport confirmed that the work was on to shift all domestic flights to the new terminal, which would also start facilitating the international flights in the coming month.

“The domestic flights will be shifted by the second week of October while for international flights, it will take some more time”, said the official.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the international terminal yesterday morning.

“As far as international flights are concerned, a total of three airlines—Indigo, Air India and Spice Jet—will start their flights to Dubai and Singapore by October end”, said Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra, the Member of Parliament from the Anandpur Sahib Constituency.

He further said it would take several months to start long-distance flights to far-fetched countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

“Actually, the Air Force operational infrastructure for wide-bodied aircraft is not ready. For wide-bodied aircraft, the length of the runway should be 10,000 ft while here we have 9000-ft long runway”, said Chandumajra.

He said very soon the required infrastructure would be readied to facilitate the long-distanced flights.

“Most Punjabis live in Canada, the USA, Australia and the UK and they are keen that flights should start from here at the earliest”, said Chandumajra.