Amritsar: Amritsar MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla submitted a detailed study report on Amritsar airport and feasibility of the new proposed flights to the chairman and managing director (CMD) of Air India Pardeep Singh Kharola. Later, Aujla said that he also discussed about some new flight proposals from Sri Guru Ram Das International Airport here.
He said the first and foremost demand was to increase frequency of the Amritsar-Nanded flight. Currently, it operates on Saturday and Sunday but considering the demand, he said, the flight should be operated on Wednesday to provide the pilgrims adequate time to visit all places of religious interest.
The Congress MP said that he also demanded that the booking period of this flight must be extended to six months so that NRIs and devotees could plan their visits. The international airport here has one terminal and was handling 23 domestic and eight international flights and the footfall of passengers was around 16 lakh per year.
"Going by the present growth trends, it is expected that by March 2018 the footfall of passengers will go up to around 23 lakh," he said. Aujla said that he discussed about the people's demand for the Amritsar-Patna-Kolkata flight, restarting of the Air India's Amritsar-Toronto direct flight, beginning of the Amritsar-Jaipur-Ahmedabad and Amritsar-Frankfurt flights and restarting of Air India's late night Delhi-Amritsar flight.
The Lok Sabha MP further said that in order to bring Air India on a profitable track it needed to concentrate on pilgrimage routes of India. He said Amritsar was one of the highly visited destinations due to its religious and geographical importance.
He said beginning of flights to Dehradun will attract devotees towards Hindu places of religious interest, including Badrinath, Kedarnath, Hardwar and Rishikesh, as well as Sikh religious places like Hemkunt Sahib and Paonta Sahib. On the other hand, Dehradun is also a transit route to Mussoorie, he added.
