TIRUCHY: Even as flights to West Asia from Tiruchy remain suspended due to the conflict in the region, the rise in price of aviation fuel has forced airlines to cut down the services from Tiruchy to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Currently, Air India Express, IndiGo Air, Scoot Air, AirAsia, Batik Air, and SriLankan Air operate services to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, and Dubai, while IndiGo Air alone operates domestic flights to Chennai (six services), Bengaluru (three services), and Hyderabad and Mumbai (one each). Flights to Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi flights were suspended since the end of February. Air India Express has since resumed the Dubai service.
Since the US-Iran conflict had no direct effect on East Asian countries like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, flight services were not affected. However, after the price hike in fuel, airlines had no option but to start suspending their services. Besides the rising fuel price, the civil aviation ministry’s order of fixing a cap on the ticket fares has been attributed as the reason for the suspension of flight services.
According to sources, AirAsia operated 21 services a week from Tiruchy to Kuala Lumpur until April. Since May, this was brought down to 14 per week. According to official sources in AirAsia, these will be further reduced to 10 per week from June.
Till a few weeks ago, Scoot Air, Air India Express, and IndiGo Air operated six services in a day to Singapore. This was reduced to three a day few weeks ago and now has come down to two a day. Indigo is also said to be planning to suspend afternoon service on Tiruchy-Bengaluru sector from June, sources said.
Speaking to the TNIE, the director of Tiruchy international airport SS Raju said “Before strife broke out in West Asia, the airport handled 6,500 people, including domestic passengers, a day, This has now come down to around 5,000 passengers a day. On Monday, we handled 5,166 passengers.”