Air traffic restored between Kashmir, rest of country

SRINAGAR: Air traffic between Kashmir and the rest of the country was restored on Thursday after four days, but lack of snow clearance reroute Srinagar airport led to massive traffic jams, forcing many passengers to walk several kilometres, officials said.

"As many as 26 flights arrived at Srinagar international airport on Thursday while 24 flights departed to destinations outside the valley. The flight operations resumed after a gap of four days,"  an official here said.

The air traffic between Srinagar airport, the only civilian airport in Kashmir, and rest of the country was suspended on Sunday due to snowfall which continued till Wednesday.

While many passengers were relieved at the resumption of air traffic, they had to face lots of inconvenience on reaching the airport, the official said.

He said as the road leading to airport had not been cleared of snow on time, it resulted in massive traffic jam from Hyderpora chowk to the airport gate.

Many passengers abandoned their vehicles and started walking to the airport so that they did not miss their flights.

"My brother and his family who was travelling to Delhi had to walk four kilometres due to traffic jam," G S Patel said.

Patel said he was driving his brother and his family to the airport but they had to walk the distance from Peerbagh to airport "as our vehicle did not move an inch for one hour."