Airlines reluctant to launch domestic services from Tiruchi
The Jet Airways is set to withdraw one of its three
services a day on the Chennai-Tiruchi-Chennai sector from April, marking
a setback for the travel industry lobbying for strengthening domestic
air connectivity from the city.
The airline, which
currently operates three flights a day on the sector, has decided to
withdraw its morning service under its summer schedule. Only recently,
Jet Airways had withdrawn a service to Kochi from here. It had been
providing a connecting service to Bangalore. In the past, SpiceJet had
withdrawn its Chennai-Tiruchi-Chennai service.
The
developments have come as a shock to the travel trade and the industry,
who had been pitching for increasing domestic services from the city.
The Tiruchi Airport currently handles 104 flights a week, of which just
28 are domestic services, and the rest international. Although the Air
India Express operates a daily service to Chennai, it is essentially an
extension of an international flight. The schedule of the flight,
operated in the afternoons, is not considered ideal.
While there has been an increase in the number of flights operated to
foreign destinations from the city, new domestic flights are hard to
come by. At present, the airport has flights to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur,
Dubai and Colombo and more international airlines are eyeing the city
for starting operations. On the other hand, there is very little
interest shown by the airlines to operate flights to domestic
destinations from Tiruchi.
Connectivity
The
excellent rail and road connectivity enjoyed by the city is cited as one
of the factors for the hesitation of air operators to come up with
domestic flights.
But travel industry
representatives feel that it is time the city got connections to major
domestic destinations. They pointed out that a weekly flight to Mumbai
operated by Air India Express some time ago had attracted consistent
load factor, despite the absence of a convenient return flight. Over the
past few years, flights introduced by Simplyfly Deccan and Kingfisher
Airlines to Bangalore have been withdrawn.
Even now,
the Jet Airways decision to withdraw the morning service was more due to
operational reasons rather than considerations of load factor, they
said.
“There is definitely demand for services to
Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi. Though the out bound traffic on the
domestic sector is good, airlines say there is not much in-bound
traffic. We have been lobbying with the airlines to introduce more
domestic services,” said M.S. Paramasivam, Chairman, TAAI, South Tamil
Nadu Chapter.
Domestic cargo
Industry operators
want airlines to operate flights on convenient timings for passengers
rather than introducing services to the city to utilise their turn
around time. If more domestic connectivity were to be strengthened,
domestic cargo movement would increase substantially, they said.
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