KOLKATA: Airlines have started operating “hopping flights” to Kolkata from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Nagpur — which were under a pandemic-induced embargo of four days a week until Monday — in order to follow the restrictions to the letter.
The flight ban from Delhi has been lifted, but restriction remain on the other five cities.
In other words, airlines have scheduled flights from these cities in such a manner that they make a midway stop.
After the complete ban on flights from these six cities was imposed in July because of their high Covid count, passengers started flying in via a second city. Flyers, however, had to change aircraft, as airlines feared they could be hauled up.
The ‘hopping-flight’ technicality hopes to — and has been able to, so far — stop those fears from coming true for the airlines, as well as making journeys smoother, though longer, for flyers.
Change in point-of-origin allows flights to bypass ban
By introducing a stopover, the point-of-origin for the arriving aircraft becomes the stopover airport, not the original airport under the ban, making it possible to fly in from an embargoed city.
“Nearly all carriers are now operating one-stop flights from these cities to Kolkata on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, when direct flights aren’t allowed,” said a Kolkata airport official. “Though it takes 60 to 90 minutes more to reach Kolkata, passengers don’t have to change aircraft as they had to do earlier.”
After the initial partial ban was lifted in September, airlines started late-night flights from those cities on days they were not allowed to fly into Kolkata. Thus, an airline had flights that depart from Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi late at night on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays so that they reach Kolkata post-midnight on Wednesdays, Fridays and Mondays, when technically flights are allowed from these cities. But when passengers flew via another city, the airlines would insist on a change of aircraft to be on the right side of the law.
“I had come to Kolkata from Mumbai on one such hopping flight in the last week of October. We were asked to disembark at Lucknow airport, underwent a second round of security check and hopped back into the same flight. Meanwhile, we were told the flight had undergone a deep sanitisation process at Lucknow airport before it took off for Kolkata with us,” said Kanyaka Basu, a Santoshpur-based financial consultant who works in Mumbai.
With travel steadily rising and the state not responding to repeated pleas for lifting curbs (apart from lifting the curbs on Delhi), airlines have now relaxed the norms and have allowed passengers to continue flying to Kolkata via another city. Though many passengers still wait to catch a direct flight to Kolkata on days the embargo is in place, the number of passengers travelling into Kolkata on those days via other cities is steadily increasing.
“At present, there is a difference of around 10,000 passengers at Kolkata airport between days when direct flights operate from the embargoed cities and on those days they don’t. Once direct flights are allowed, this daily fluctuation in passenger movement will reduce,” said an airline official.
Airport officials said they had, on multiple occasions, held talks with state government representatives for lifting the ban but with little response from the government. “Even the civil aviation ministry has asked them to consider lifting the ban as almost all other states have lifted the domestic flight-related restrictions. It was even discussed at the airport advisory committee, following which the committee chairperson and MP Saugata Roy had written to the state government to consider lifting the ban. However, there has been no response yet,” said an airport official.