Flight connect to Udaipur set to resume after 20 years

CLEARED SKHER

Aurangabad: The air connectivity to Udaipur , which was snapped twenty years back, is set to be re-established with the introduction of new flights from Aurangabad airport next month.

DG Salve, director of Aurangabad airport, said that the Mumbai-Aurangabad-Udaipur and Udaipur-Aurangabad-Mumbai flights will begin operating from September 27.

State-run carrier Air India has proposed to facilitate the flights. With this, the total number of flights operating from Aurangabad airport will go up to seven.

Currently, Air India is facilitating flights to Delhi and Mumbai. Private airlines operator Trujet is running daily to and from Hyderabad. The Spicejet service to Delhi is expected to begin from October 8 and to Ahmedabad from September 1.

Salve said the Mumbai-Aurangabad-Udaipur will depart from Aurangabad at 7.15 am and reach Udaipur at 8.40am, while the Udaipur-Aurangabad-Mumbai flight will start from Aurangabad at 12.25pm and will reach Mumbai at 13.35pm. The bookings for the Udaipur flights are yet to be started.

Early this year, Usha Padhee, joint secretary of ministry of civil aviation, had given assurance on starting the Aurangabad-Udaipur-Jodhpur flight under UDAN III scheme.

The flight is deemed important from the tourism perspective. Jaswant Singh, president of Tourism Promotors Guild, has urged the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation to widely promote the flight connectivity between Aurangabad and Udaipur. “It would translate into increased tourist inflow to Aurangabad. The discontinuation of Aurangabad-Udaipur flight twenty years ago had negatively impacted the tourism sector,” he said.