TIRUCHY: The Centre recently doing away with the pre-departure Covid-19 testing norm for passengers in all international flights from or via China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Thailand and Japan, and the airport advisory committee in its latest meeting discussing the need for inclusion of more routes to Tiruchy has boosted travel operators’ hopes of more destinations figuring in the international airport’s summer schedule.
The international airport currently has operations to Kuwait, Singapore, Sharjah, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Doha, Muscat and Abu Dhabi. In the domestic sector, the airport offers connectivity to Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. While the winter schedule last October had not added any new destinations in Tiruchy's aviation map, the recent airport advisory committee meeting of airlines and other stakeholders discussed the need for adding more domestic and international routes for Tiruchy.
"We are ready to allocate slots for any international or domestic operations in Tiruchy. But no airlines have so far made such requests. We are, however, trying from our side to get operations to more destinations," a source said. This has boosted hope among travel operators. N Ramesh, a travel agent, said, "In the international sector, we are looking for operations to new destinations like Thailand.
On the domestic side, we want operations to Delhi, Mumbai and Kochi. We also expect increasing operations to Gulf countries in the upcoming schedule." The summer schedule commences in the last week of March. Meanwhile, airline authorities said that even if Tiruchy failed to get new destinations in the upcoming schedule, it was likely to get more operations from June.
"This is the second largest airport in Tamil Nadu. The construction of the new terminal is expected to be completed by June. It would definitely attract more operations to Tiruchy. Thus, even if Tiruchy failed to get operations to new destinations in the summer schedule, the situation would change after June," a senior official of an airline said.