Expressing concerns over the diminishing footfall at Kalaburagi Airport in the last year, Lok Sabha member from Kalaburagi Umesh Jadhav has urged the Ministry of Civil Aviation to invite more airline operators in the civil aviation sector such as Indigo, Air India, Vistara and SpiceJet to offer services from here.
In a letter he wrote to Secretary of Ministry of Civil Aviation Rajiv Bansal on Monday, Mr. Jadhav said that flight operations and the number of air travellers have drastically dipped at Kalaburagi Airport for unknown reasons.
Citing the information provided by the Airport Authority of India (AAI), Mr. Jadhav said that Kalaburagi Airport handled 194 flights and 7,594 air travellers in April 2022 as compared to 144 flights and 4,688 air passengers in April 2023.
“In one year between April 2022 and April 2023, a total of 2,138 flights have been operated from this airport and 83,831 people travelled. From April 2021 and April 2022, 2,343 flights had been operated with 93,964 onboard passengers,” Mr. Jadhav noted in the letter.
Pointing to the recent permission given by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for night landing at Kalaburagi Airport, Mr. Jadhav urged the Ministry to invite major airline operators Indigo, Air India, Vistara and SpiceJet to start operations from Kalaburagi Airport to Mumbai, Goa, Ahmadabad, Pune, Mangaluru, Ajmer, Delhi and other metropolitan cities.
The Kalaburagi Airport, one of the fastest growing airports in India in the category of Tier 2 cities, was commissioned and operationalised on November 19, 2019.
Two airlines, Star Air and Alliance Air, operate from the airport under the RCS UDAN scheme. Kalaburagi Airport is designed to handle Airbus 320.
