Tripura CM writes to PMO on deepening flight shortage

AGARTALA: Chief minister Biplab Deb on Monday wrote to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) seeking additional flights in the Agartala sector to ensure availability of affordable tickets for flyers around the year. With air fares having shot up by five times over the last two weeks, the council of ministers held a special meeting on Monday evening over the deepening crisis, expressing concern over the failure of the civil aviation ministry to bring more flight operators to the region.
According to officials, Union minister of state for civil aviation Jayanta Sinha on Tuesday assured the chief minister that the Centre will make additional arrangement of flights to normalize the currently prevailing passenger pressure here.
Meanwhile, CPM MP Shankar Prasad Datta has also sent a letter to Union civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu, urging that permanent steps be taken to solve the crisis of shortage of flights to and from Tripura.
Dutta stated, "Ignoring the requests of the state government, most flight operators have gradually withdrawn their fleets from the state since 2010. The new operators like Vistara, Air Asia and Go Air do not run any flight to the Agartala sector though as per rule they need to cover the major state capitals of the northeast. Low-cost carrier SpiceJet withdrew its service from the state last month and two days ago Indigo also discontinued its Kolkata-Agartala morning flight. This has affected passenger movement severely," Dutta stated.
Dutta's letter to the Centre demanded that SpiceJet and Indigo reinstate their flights immediately, Air India start one more flight for the Agartala sector and that all other aviation operators start services in Tripura on a regular basis.
Passenger movement from Tripura has been severely affected owing to a shortage of flight tickets in the last two weeks, leaving many students, tourists, patients and VIPs stranded here. No immediate tickets for flying to Guwahati and Kolkata are available and the price of tickets for the next day are at least five times more than the normal.
A senior official of the administration said, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself stressed on the improvement of air connectivity in the northeast. However, the state's air fleet has decreased gradually since 2011 even though the airport footfall is increasing by 15-20% annually."
"Earlier, it was thought that this could be down to a shortage of funds from the Centre because of a clash of political ideology. It was expected that basic issues of connectivity and infrastructure would be solved after installation of the BJP-IPFT government, but the experience over the last seven months has not been satisfactory," he added.