SHILLONG: After biting the dust for more than six months, the state of the art Umroi airport at Shillong is all set to be functional once again from Wednesday.
Air India is all set to resume its direct flight between Shillong and Kolkata from July 10, an initiative that would once again revive the aerial connectivity in the land locked State.
In a statement issued from Air India, it was informed that flights will operate five days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
The Air India would use a 46-seater ATR aircraft.
It may be mentioned that the Alliance Air, a subsidy of Air India had suspended its service from the Northeastern region (including from Umroi airport) earlier this year while blaming the North Eastern Council (NEC) for failing to pay pending dues to the state-owned carrier.
The alleged failure of NEC to pay over Rs. 100 crore, due for two years, has also led Air India not renewing the lease of three turbo-prop ATR planes.
The absence of flights from Shillong took its toll on many air passengers who had to travel all the way to Guwahati to board a flight.
The NEC then disputed the “arrears” claimed by the Alliance Air since the agreement to run flights to the three airports- Umroi, Lilabari and Tezpur expired way back in 2011. The NEC’s agreement to run flights to the three airports came to an end on December 31, 2011, the NEC had said earlier. As per the statement, Air India flight AI9712 will depart from Shillong at 1415 hours and arrive at Kolkata at 1555 hours.
Earlier, flight AI9711 would reach Shillong at 1355 hours leaving Kolkata at 1215 hours.
The statement also said that the Air India has restored connections from Kolkata to Ranchi, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad and Dhaka in recent times.
The North Eastern Council on the other hand is working out a bidding process to invite other airlines to operate from the Umroi airport.