Flights may resume from Mysore Airport in Sept with Chennai service

If all goes well, commercial flight operations will resume in Mysore Airport in September. The authorities are planning to introduce a service between Mysuru and Chennai.

The airport authorities said, following an initiative of the government, two private airlines have shown interest to start commercial flights from Mysuru. However, the schedule is yet to be finalised.

The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments have entered into an agreement under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS), popularly known as UDAN, to provide the service. Air Odisha and Turbo Megha Airways have shown interest to operate between Mysuru and Chennai.

The air fare under RCS is capped at Rs 2,500 for 500-km travel. The airways will operate with funds from union as well as state governments.

Initially, two private operators will run on the Chennai-Mysuru-Chennai route. The authorities have promised to introduce connecting flights from Mysuru to other parts of the country in the days to come.

The primary objective of RCS is to facilitate regional air connectivity, making it affordable by supporting airline operators through concessions by the union and state governments and airport operators, to reduce the cost of airline operations on regional routes. There will also be financial support to meet the gap between the cost of airline operations and expected revenue on the routes.

Other objectives are to enhance regional connectivity through fiscal support and infrastructure development, to establish an integral eco-system which would lead to a significant growth of the civil aviation sector, tourism and increase in employment opportunities.

This is the fourth time air services are being introduced from Mysuru Airport. The service was first introduced in March 2010. Kingfisher Airways introduced the service between Mysuru and Bengaluru. It stopped the service in October 2011, due to poor response. Spice Jet introduced flights in January 2013 and stopped the operations in October 2014.

Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, which launched its service in September 2015, operated only for three months due to low occupancy.