SHILLONG: After a gap of nearly two months, Air India resumed its Shillong-Kolkata service on Saturday with five passengers.
Informing this here on Saturday, the Station Manager of Air India LTd ST Bhutia said that number of passenger was low since it was the first day and hoped the number of passengers should definitely increase in days to come.
Following the intervention of the DoNER and the Civil Aviation Ministry, Alliance Air, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India Limited (AI), agreed to resume its operation in the region.
Alliance Air is the wholly owned subsidiary of Air India and the airline stopped services in these routes due to irregular payment of the viability gap funding by the North Eastern Council (NEC) and also “following expiry of agreement on May 31.”
The service has resumed only after the NEC agreed to provide Viability Gap Funding (VGF) to Alliance Air for resumption of services, as these sectors are loss making.
Alliance Air has resumed service to the airports at Lilabari and Tezpur in Assam.
The issue was taken up with the new government in the Centre. This issue was taken by the Minister of DoNER with the Ministry of Civil Aviation on priority following which Alliance Air agreed to resume its operation in the region with a frequency of 6 days a week for Kolkata-Shillong flight, 3 days a week for Kolkata-Guwahati-Tezpur and 4 days a week for Kolkata-Guwahati- Lilabari.
Alliance Air service to Silchar from Kolkata will start from August 10.
Everything is now back on track as far as the aerial connectivity to the land locked state is concerned but the airport still lacks basic infrastructure such as Advance Landing Sytem (ALS), refueling stations and hanger which is a must for any busy airport.
