Bathinda residents irked as flight, train to New Delhi yet to resume

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“Keeping in view the ground reality (about the demand), I request the Civil Aviation Ministry to review its report on the commercial viability of the Delhi-Bathinda route and sanction daily flights on this route at the earliest.” – Harsimrat Badal, former Union minister

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, March 18

People from the region who regularly commute to New Delhi are facing inconvenience these days as both the Shatabdi Express, which runs from Ferozepur to Delhi via Bathinda, and the Air Alliance flight between Bathinda and Delhi are lying defunct since the lockdown came into force last year.

Air Alliance, a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India, was the only air connectivity service operational in the Malwa region between Bathinda and Delhi since it started its operations from the Bathinda airport at Virk Kalan village in December 2016.

Last year, the Bathinda-Delhi flight was suspended due to the lockdown. In the meanwhile, the contract commitment ended and Air India chose not to extend it, due to which till date, no flight is operational from the Bathinda airport.

The air service to Bathinda was started as part of the Centre”s ambitious regional air connectivity scheme (RCS) of Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN).

Later, the flight to Jammu was also started from the Bathinda airport, but it was discontinued in November 2019 due to low occupancy.

However, after getting many queries from students and staff members of AIIMS, Central University of Punjab (CUB) in Bathinda for a flight between Bathinda and Delhi, the Bathinda airport management contacted a couple of service providers to start the service from here, but nothing has materialised to date.

Bathinda Airport Director Varinder Singh said, “As of now, there is no information when the flight between Bathinda and Delhi will resume from here”.

Former Union minister Harsimrat Badal, who had raised this issue in Parliament also, alleged that the Union Government had wrongly claimed in Parliament that the Delhi-Bathinda flight was not commercially viable due to limited passengers, and low yields as well as an end to subsidy support under the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) scheme after a period of three years.

“Keeping in view the ground reality, I request the Civil Aviation Ministry to review its report on the commercial viability of the Delhi-Bathinda route and sanction daily flights on this route at the earliest,” she added.

Similarly, the bi-weekly Shatabdi Express running between Ferozepur and Delhi via Bathinda is also lying defunct. Due to this, people are left with no option but to travel to Delhi by road either by their own car or by hiring a cab.