Adampur-Delhi flight may not benefit NRIs

Varinder Singh

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Tribune News Service

Adampur (Jalandhar), April 27

There is uncertainty over the utility of the maiden May 1 Adampur-Delhi flight for NRIs travelling to and from Western destinations owing to the flight’s connectivity issues from Delhi onwards for long international flights.

The Adampur-Delhi and return flight, travel experts have observed, is going to be more suitable either for domestic passengers heading for destinations like Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai or international passengers from Doaba headed for countries such as Dubai and Singapore, Malasiya and in some cases to England.

The flight, they say, might not prove to be as useful for passengers heading for the US, Canada, Italy and Germany due to “mismatching” connectivity and one-third baggage allowance to passengers as compared to international flights.

The SpiceJet flight SG 8732 will leave Adampur at 5.05 pm and land at Terminal 2 of Delhi Airport at 6.15 p.m. On the other hand, a majority of international flights to the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany leave the Indira Gandhi International Airport from around midnight onwards and till 9 am. It leaves a huge time gap for those heading for these countries.

The flight no. SG 8731 will leave Delhi at 3.30 pm and will arrive at Adampur at 4.45 pm. Another major issue which could hamper the travel of NRIs from or to Doaba via SpiceJet flight was that they were allowed a meagre baggage allowance of 15 kg per passengers (without extra charges). On international flights, they could carry as much as 46 kg, a huge mismatch.

Still another hiccup for international passengers travelling via other flights could be the absence of proper transfer facility from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3 of the IGI, Delhi, from where international flights leave for outbound destinations.

“The connectivity remains a real concern for Doaba passengers. For example, most of international flights leave the IGI around 1-2 am onwards. There is a gap of six or more hours. The flight will, however, offer excellent connectivity for most of domestic destinations and international destinations like Dubai, Singapore, Malasiya and in some cases to England,” said DP Sondhi, former president, Punjab Travel Agents’ Association.

He said the domestic load of passenger was expected to remain around 70 per cent for the flight. “The baggage allowance needs to be enhanced by the airline immediately,” he said.

“The timing of the flight needs to be changed so that these are more suitable for inland and outbound passengers from Delhi onwards. It will take not less than a fortnight for the flight to stabilise,” observed Ramesh Bhatia, former management committee member of the Travel Agents’ Association of India (TAAI), a national body of travel agents.

Gautam Kapoor, a Jalandhar-based hotelier and exporter, expected the flight to be a runaway success. “The people of Doaba have finally got what they have been yearning for years,” he said.