BHUBANESWAR: It has been over five years since flagship carrier Air India (AI) has stopped operations on busy Kolkata-Bhubaneswar-Hyderabad route. While private players have already taken up the slots and are witnessing enough traffic, AI has no immediate plan to restart the operations on the route in near future.
A team of tour operators of Odisha had met AI’s Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) Pankaj Kumar who was on a visit to the city last month and put up a proposal to revive operations to Kolkata and Hyderabad. The Air India, which stopped operations on the route in 2012, was expected to revive it in May. But it could not materialise.
Kumar accompanied by a sales team of the company from Kolkata also discussed prospects of starting operations on other domestic and international routes from the Biju Patnaik International Airport.
With cancellation of operations to Kolkata and Hyderabad, the national carrier is losing 80-100 passengers on both the routes on a daily basis. Kolkata and Bhubaneswar are important destinations of Eastern India while Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar share common platform on the IT sector.
Besides, other routes like Colombo-Varanasi via Bhubaneswar was a major point of discussion at the meeting. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing direct connectivity between Sri Lankan Capital and Varanasi during his visit to Colombo this week, the operators here hope that the upcoming flight would be routed through Bhubaneswar soon.
“Odisha has a rich Buddhist heritage which both tourists and pilgrims from Sri Lanka are keen to explore. Currently, they opt for a flight from Hyderabad or Kolkata to visit Odisha,” a senior tour operator said.
It has also been proposed to start direct flights from Bhubaneswar to Dubai and opening up connectivity between Bhubaneswar and South East Asia by diverting Air India flight from Kolkata to Singapore via Bhubaneswar.
“The AI officials have assured us that new routes and revival of sectors would be placed before the Air India Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, who is likely to visit the city in a couple of months,” senior travel expert Benjamin Simon said.