NEW DELHI: Low-cost carrier SpiceJet on Saturday announced 66 new domestic flights, including five additional non-stop ones from Pune to Darbhanga, Durgapur, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Varanasi from March 28 to meet the increasing demand for air travel from smaller cities.
Kolkata–Darbhanga, Chennai–Jharsuguda, and Nashik-Kolkata flights are among other new flights being launched.
There will also be new non-stop daily flights on Mumbai-Leh, Leh-Srinagar, Srinagar-Mumbai, Hyderabad-Mumbai, Mumbai-Hyderabad, Mumbai-Surat, Surat-Mumbai, Kochi-Pune, and Pune-Kochi routes.
“As the country’s largest regional operator, the new flights further reiterate our commitment towards enhancing regional connectivity, besides offering unique connections to many leisure destinations,” said Shilpa Bhatia, Chief Commercial Officer, SpiceJet.
With these flights, SpiceJet passengers from cities such as Varanasi, Darbhanga, Durgapur Srinagar, Leh, Dharamshala, Rajkot, Surat, Madurai and Gorakhpur among others will be able to travel to a host of other cities both on the airline’s domestic as well as international network.
The carrier will deploy its Boeing 737 & Bombardier Q400 aircraft on these routes.
Not only SpiceJet, airlines in India have been increasing their focus across smaller cities and towns as growth in these centres have outpaced metro cities. The country’s largest airline IndiGo is also expanding its regional connectivity.
Last month, Indigo had announced starting 22 new flights from March 28 onwards.
The new operations will be from Agartala, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai, Bengaluru, Patna and Tirupati, among other cities, Indigo had said.
Non-metro airports see increased traffic
According to data from the Airports Authority of India, a total of 14 non-metro airports reported an increased traffic passenger in January 2021 compared to same month last year.
Domestic passenger traffic in January this year was recorded at 77.34 lakh, showed data from DGCA.
