VIJAYAWADA:TruJet, an airline from Turbo Megha Airways Private Limited, launched its Vijayawada station here Sunday. On the occasion, its first inaugural flight from Hyderabad arrived in the city at 3.30 pm and returned half-an-hour later.
Describing it as an important milestone for their company, which was launched in July, Turbo Megha’s managing director Vankayalapati Umesh said that temple tourism has been their focus and they are planning to connect Vijayawada with Visakhapatnam, Cochin (Sabarimala) and Aurangabad (Shirdi) shortly. He also announced that they want to connect tier-1 cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore to tier II and III cities like Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati.
“Our focus is on connecting temple cities/towns and creating a niche market in temple tourism. We have already connected Hyderabad with Tirupati and Aurangabad to facilitate pilgrims visiting Tirumala and Shirdi respectively. Shortly, we plan to connect Vijayawada with Aurangabad and Cochin,” he said and added that their priority is to connect Vijayawada with Cochin, which is near to Sabarimala, as it is the pilgrimage season for the abode of Lord Ayappa Swamy.
TruJet has advantage over others, for it provide free road transport from the temple towns like Shirdi, Tirupati and Sabarimali for its passengers. “We will also provide free road transport from Amaravati, Guntur, Eluru, Bhimavaram to Gannavaram Airport in Vijayawada for those who have booked to and fro tickets,” he announced.
Expressing satisfaction over the response for the airline, which is run by the company partly owned by actor K Ram Charan, he said that they are presently operating two state-of-the-art ATR 72-500 aircrafts and another will be procured by month-end. “It will be operational by third week of October and we are contemplating adding another two aircrafts by the end of January 2016.”