ITANAGAR, 12 Mar: Civil aviation minister Balo Raja urged the union civil aviation minister to induct/allow more airline operators to operate flights between Itanagar and Delhi to bring competitiveness in the airfare.
Currently, Indigo operates flights from Itanagar to Delhi four days a week under the UDAN scheme. However, airfare between Itanagar and Delhi goes up significantly, when booked last minute, causing much distress to passengers, particularly patients and students, Raja wrote to union civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu.
Raja said that airfare between the two destinations had soared upto Rs. 22,000 in mid October last year, when booked last minute.
“This has defeated the very purpose of air connectivity to the state,” he said.
Raja said that people including, businessmen are reaching out to the state government expressing their concern over the exorbitantly high airfare.
He also said that the issue was brought to the knowledge of the ministry by various authorities on several occasions earlier.
Further, Raja reiterated his urge to increase the frequency of flights from Itanagar to New Delhi and Kolkata, including introduction of morning flight from Itanagar to the national capital.
He also urged the union minister to launch daily flights from Itanagar to New Delhi and direct flights from Itanagar to other metro cities, like Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad etc, to deploy ATR-72 instead of Dornier-228 under RCS-UDAN between Guwahati and Itanagar.