Flight operations under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) will begin from Bihar’s Darbhanga Airport in the first week of November, Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Saturday.
The minister who reviewed ongoing work at Darbhanga, Deoghar (Jharkhand) and Patna airports on Saturday said that the booking of daily flights from Darbhanga to Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru will start before September 30.
“The flight operation will begin in the first week of November, before the auspicious Chhath Puja festival. This will be of great help to 22 districts in northern Bihar, ”Puri said.
Spicejet will operate flights from Darbhanga to Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai under RCS.
Meanwhile, the number of daily flights from Patna airport will increase from next week. The government is likely to increase the limit to restrict flight operations from the current 60% to 75% of approved flights in the summer time (as of March 29) from Patna Airport.
The state had proposed to completely remove the restriction on the number of flights operated from Patna, to which Puri did not agree at this time. Airline sources say that most of the 32 daily scheduled flights were operating with full passenger loads at this time.
Patna Airport, which used to handle an average of 54 daily departures during the pre-Covid period, currently handles 32. Raising the flight limit would mean an increase of five flights, airport officials said.
Flights from Patna were expected to increase in the Delhi and Bengaluru sectors.
Construction work on a new terminal building at Patna airport, at a cost of Rs 1216.90 crore, will likely be completed in March 2023, senior officials said. The previous deadline was October 2022. Once completed, the terminal building will be able to handle 8 million passengers per year, with a peak-hour passenger handling capacity of 3,000 passengers and a platform capacity to park 11 aircraft at a time, plus a cargo handling capacity of 10,000. metric tons annually, said the airport’s director, BCH Negi.
The capacity of the existing national terminal building was 0.7 million passengers per year (MPPA) prior to expansion and modification. In 2019-2020, the airport handled around 4.8 million passengers.
Speaking about the Darbhanga airport, Puri said that this would be one more step within the ambitious UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme to provide air connectivity to the inland regions of the country under the motto ‘Sab Uden, Sab Juden’.
Meanwhile, the state government has informed the Center about operational deficiencies at Darbhanga airport.
“We have informed the secretary of civil aviation that with the navigation aid currently available at Darbhanga airport and the foggy conditions during winters, flight operation may not be possible between December and March due to poor visibility. The secretary has assured us that we will look into it, ”said Sanjay Kumar, chief secretary of Bihar’s cabinet coordination department, who is also in charge of the civil aviation department in the state.
Kumar said the state government had spent 120 million rupees in acquiring 31 acres of land for the civil enclave of Darbhanga, to be handed over to the IAF. The latter will transfer equitable lands instead to the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
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