Daily Sharjah flight from city boon for Majha region

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 19

Rescheduling of the Amritsar-Sharjah daily flight from October 1 by IndiGo will immensely benefit Punjabis in general and residents of the Majha region in particular who are working and living in the UAE.

It will be the third flight to the Gulf from Sri Guru Ram Das Jee (SGRDJ) International Airport. Already, two flights to Dubai are being operated by SpiceJet and Air India Express.

Welcoming the decision by the airline, Sameep Singh, Gumtala Global Convener of FlyAmritsar Initiative, informed that India’s low-cost carrier Indigo would be the first airline after a gap of almost five years to provide direct connectivity between the holy city and Sharjah in the UAE.

According to the schedule on its website, the flight will leave Amritsar at 11.35 am and reach Sharjah at 1.35 pm (local time). The return flight will depart from Sharjah airport at 2.35pm (local time) and arrive in Amritsar at 7.40pm. IndiGo had launched a daily flight between Amritsar and Dubai in October 2018 only to be withdrawn earlier this month.

It will be the eighth international destination from Amritsar. The Holy City is also connected via direct flights to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Doha, Birmingham and Tashkent. Flights to Ashgabat by Turkmenistan airlines are still suspended due to a ban on the airlines to fly to Europe.

He said the flight to Sharjah would benefit Punjabis working in Sharjah and neighbouring Emirates (States) of Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al-Khaimah and Fujairah. It was their long-pending demand. The direct flight would save them time and cost as, currently, in addition to expenses for travel by road from Dubai, they had to spend 30 dirham every time they crossed from Dubai into Sharjah, said Gumtala.

Yogesh Kamra, Convener, FlyAmritsar, said SpiceJet and Air India Express had been running their flights to Dubai from Amritsar for the past few years. In 2018, the Amritsar-Dubai route had the highest number of passengers among all direct flights from Amritsar to international destinations. Out of the 7.99 lakh passengers travelled, 2.68 lakh travelled on direct flights on this route.

At present, all the three Indian carriers operating daily flights to Dubai and Sharjah has no code share partnerships with any foreign airline operating from these airports and hence, do not connect its passengers to other international destinations.

In March, SpiceJet signed a code-share agreement with Emirates to connect its passengers from Amritsar on Emirates destinations via Dubai. Since then, there has been no update by both the carriers on when it is going to come into effect.