Air India, AirAsia to launch flights to Bangkok from Bhubaneswar

After launching a daily flight from the Bhubaneswar international airport to Kuala Lumpur, AirAsia now plans to start services to Bangkok from the city airport.

"Thai AirAsia is slated to start flights from Bhubaneswar in January or February next year. However, it is not decided how many times it will fly in a week", said Ashok Chandra Panda, Odisha's tourism minister.

The minister said that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) is likely to be signed between Thai AirAsia and the Odisha tourism department to start services.

Panda said, Air India has also proposed to start international flights from Bhubaneswar. It has proposed to fly from Bhubaneswar to Bangkok via Gaya (Bihar).

Thai AirAsia is a joint venture of AirAsia and Thailand's Asia Aviation.

In April this year, Air Asia had started its operations from Bhubaneswar with four weekly direct flights from Kuala Lumpur. It now runs daily flights connecting Bhubaneswar with Kuala Lumpur.

Sources said that Thai AirAsia is willing to launch flight operation to Bangkok from Bhubaneswar on condition of receiving Rs 1.70 lakh as subsidy per flight service.

International carriers who opt to operate flights to and from the city airport would enjoy full waiver from value added tax (VAT) on aviation turbine fuel (ATF).

The state cabinet had decided to slash VAT on ATF for such carriers to zero from five per cent to boost international air connectivity.

The Biju Patnaik Airport or Bhubaneswar Airport belongs to Airports Authority of India (AAI) and is suitable for operation of Code 'D' aircraft of type B-767-400. The airport is also equipped with facilities for night operations, runway 14/32 of dimension 2743m X 45m, apron to park six aircrafts and navigational aids.

AirAsia was selected through competitive bidding to start operations from Odisha. The state government had invited an Expression of Interest (EoI) from the scheduled air carriers for running flights to destinations in South East Asia like Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. To woo the air carriers, the state government had agreed to provide reasonable Viability Gap Funding (VGF) in the form of subsidy grant.