By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Alliance Air, which had suspended its service from the Northeastern region (including from Umroi airport) earlier this year, is likely to resume its services from July 1.
Sources from the North Eastern Council (NEC) on Saturday informed that the chairman of Air India Rohit Nandan had recently assured the Council that the Alliance Air would resume its service from July 1.
However, the NEC is not taking Nandan’s commitment seriously. A few months back a similar commitment was made to resume service from June 24 but nothing has materialized till date.
The state of the art Umroi airport became non- functional after Alliance Air stopped its service from the airport in January this year.
However, sources informed that the bidding process for inviting other airlines to Umroi airport would continue and all efforts would be made to bring more flights to the Umroi airport.
It may be mentioned that the NEC earlier had floated an Expression of Interest (EoI) for airline services to and from the Airport, but only two bidders – North East Shuttles and Seven Sisters Airlines – sent their responses.
In view of the poor response, the NEC again requested for fresh proposals and this time around altogether seven bidders have responded to the proposal.
Though some amount of fund was sanctioned for the construction of the boundary wall of the airport, but it was stalled by the land owners due to non-payment of their land compensation. The State Government had handed over 224 acres of land for expansion of the runway from the existing 6000 feet to 7500 feet to facilitate landing of bigger aircraft but the expansion plan is yet to be implemented. Reacting to a query about the expansion of the runway, sources said that the NEC was trying hard to get the sanction for expansion of runway within this year.
