JHARSUGUDA: Flight service at Odisha’s second airport, Veer Surendra Sai (VSS) airport, is all set to take off again under UDAN scheme from Sunday.
The budget airline SpiceJet will operate daily direct flights to VSS airport from Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The first flight of SpiceJet will take off from Delhi at 1.15 pm and reach Jharsuguda at 3.10 pm.
“Its a historic moment for us as for the first time, a bigger commercial flight will land at VSS airport on Sunday. Due to enforcement of model code of conduct, we have not organised any grand function to welcome the first flight of SpiceJet here. However, we have planned to give a water cannon salute to the flight,” said Director of VSS Airport S K Chauhan.
The airport, having a handling capacity of 300 passengers, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22 last year. He had flagged off the flight operated by Air Odisha under UDAN 1.0, but its licence was cancelled for failing to operate minimum scheduled flights.
Subsequently, the cancelled and additional routes where again included in the bidding process under UDAN 3.0 scheme where four airlines, Alliance Air, SpiceJet, Turbo Aviation and Jet Airways, were allowed to operate from Jharsuguda to five cities- Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi.