First evening flight lands at Srinagar Airport from Bengaluru

The first evening flight landed at Srinagar International Airport from Bengaluru on Monday evening much to the delight of frequent flyers.

The airport officials said that the IndiGo flight departed from Bengaluru at 3:35 pm and arrived in Srinagar at 7 pm on Monday.

“The commencement of night flights has made the airport abuzz with activity and it will be beneficial for both locals as well as tourists,” Director, Airports Authority of India (AAI), Srinagar, Santosh Dhoke said.

He said that the Bengaluru-Srinagar direct flight will operate on a daily basis adding that various airlines have started direct flights between Srinagar and several other cities such as Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.

It may be mentioned that the Srinagar-Bengaluru direct flight has been resumed after a hiatus of more than one year due to Covid-19.

Earlier on Sunday, regular evening flight operations started at the Srinagar Airport while on Friday, the first-ever night flight by a commercial operator took off. With the start of night operations of flights, the summer schedule will see a substantial increase in flights to J&K. According to Dhoke number of daily flights has increased from 25 to 30 in February to almost 40 flights now.

“As of now we have three evening daily flights which are likely to increase to almost five in the next few days,” he said and added they expect almost 50 flight arrivals by the end of June.

Kashmiris, residing in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and other cities have welcomed the direct night flight operations.

“Earlier one had to wait for hours at Delhi airport to catch a connecting flight It was a time-consuming process, but now travelling to and fro Kashmir would become easier,” said Nayeem, a businessman.

Srinagar Airport is under the direct operational control of the Indian Air Force (IAF), which controls its air traffic and landing strip and also the facilities of fire-fighting and crash activities, apart from the airspace.

Starting post-sunset flight operations is mainly coming together of two factors - technical feasibility and permissions from authorities.