A senior Airports Authority of India (AAI) official has written to several airlines requesting them to keep an aircraft exclusively for the northeast to improve inter-state air connectivity in the region.
“Movement within NER (Northeast region) is difficult, unsafe, time-consuming and costly by other means,” AAI’s regional executive director for the northeast, Sanjeev Jindal, wrote in separate letters to top officials of Trujet, SpiceJet and Indigo airlines on October 1.
“We suggest if one small aircraft like ATR is placed at one of the stations such as Guwahati/Shillong/Lengpui and that connects different airports it will be very profitable sector at one hand as well as it will be a turning point for the Northeast region,” Jindal said.
As of now, 12 out of the 21 airports in the eight states of the northeast are functional. Guwahati has connections to eight of the 11 other functional airports in the region and Imphal which has direct flights to Aizawl, Guwahati and Agartala in the region apart from flights to other airports in the country.
However, most other airports have a few flights to airports in the region mostly connecting them to Guwahati or Kolkata and Delhi.
From Shillong in Meghalaya and Nagaland’s Dimapur, however, Kolkata is the only flying option and Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh and Lilabari in Assam have flights only for Guwahati besides a flight to both the airports.
Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, has only 10 flights a week to Kolkata and Imphal since Jet Airways shut its operations in February.
In his letter to airlines, Jindal wrote about the potential of movement of people like tourists, traders, doctors, those in need of medical attention, students, government official and so on.
“This one aircraft can become the game-changer for this part of the country,” Jindal said.
Asked about the progress in the regional connectivity scheme, he explained that out of the six routes awarded in the first two phases only one connecting Jorhat to Kolkata is functional. The response to UDAN3, the third phase was good, yet, none of the 15 routes that were awarded has taken off yet.
“For an airline like the IndiGo, if they base an aircraft in the region, it will be a win-win situation for they can service both, the routes allotted to them under the RCS and other commercial routes,” Jindal said.
A comprehensive list of routes under the regional connectivity scheme on AAI’s website shows that among others, proposals to connect Shillong to Imphal, Agartala, Dimapur, Aizawl, Dimapur to Guwahati have been cancelled.
Some other routes, for example, the one connecting Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh to Guwahati and Jorhat in Assam are non-functional at the moment. Services to Rupsi airport in Assam are also yet to begin.
“There isn’t much of an improvement in the air connectivity situation in the Mizoram except Go Air’s flight connecting Aizawl to Delhi via Guwahati is launching on October 14,” Mizoram’s principal secretary in-charge of aviation, J Lalhmingliana, said.
Lalhmingliana said Chief Minister Zoramthanga has had at least four meetings with the Union minister of civil aviation this year.
Passenger movement at the Guwahati airport registered a surge of over 23% in 2018-19 from the previous year, according to records. At other airports like Shillong, Lilabari, Lengpui (Aizawl) and Tezpur it registered a decline ranging from a little over 3% to over 23%.
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