Express News Service
GUWAHATI: An Alliance Air flight from Kolkata touched down at Arunachal Pradesh’s Pasighat advanced landing ground on Monday, making it the first fixed-wing commercial flight to the Northeastern state. The operation of commercial flights has been a long-cherished dream of Arunachalis, and it has now been partially fulfilled in the state.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu boarded the flight at the Lokopriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Guwahati along with several high-ranking state officials. At 2:30 pm, the Alliance Air flight touched down at the advanced landing ground (ALG). Later, the aircraft took off for Kolkata after halting for about two hours at Pasighat. The Kolkata-Guwahati-Pasighat flight, which was near full, will operate thrice a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
“Today is a historic day, and I congratulate the people of Arunachal, in general, and the people of Pasighat, in particular, for this new milestone that will remain engraved in history as a huge step in the development of our state,” the Chief Minister said during a function at the Pasighat civilian terminal. Khandu tweeted that he was proud to be part of the “historic moment”. He also expressed his gratefulness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of Civil Aviation for connecting Arunachal with airways.
“The next in the line is Tezu,” Khandu said. He added that the state government was in the process of hiring a small eight-ten seater fixed-wing aircraft under the Chief Minister’s Air Connectivity Scheme to connect some other locations including Mechuka.
Earlier in the day, the CM flagged off the flight service to Pasighat and distributed boarding passes to passengers. According to officials, the one-way fare of the 48-seater flight will be around Rs 3,000.
On April 23, the Alliance Air carried out a test landing at the airport thereby paving the way for the operation of commercial flights. An ATR-42 aircraft had taken about two hours and 20 minutes to reach Pasighat from Guwahati.
