Global flight ops from early March

The trial run of international flight operations from the Biju Patnaik airport in the city is set to take off from the first week of March.

This was decided at a high level meeting on Monday chaired by chief secretary J K Mohapatra. Global carriers like flydubai and Air Asia have submitted schedules to run commercial operations from Bhubaneswar. While flydubai will offer connectivity from Bhubaneswar to Dubai, Air Asia will run flights between Bhubaneswar and Kuala Lumpur.

Issues relating to manpower requirement at the airport, deployment of officers and personnel from the government and training of personnel were discussed at the meeting. Apart from flydubai and Air Asia, Air Arabia and SilkAir have also evinced interest to start commercial operations.

Air Arabia, a low cost airline based in Sharjah (UAE) is keen to run flights between Bhubaneswar and the UAE. Air Arabia is the only publicly listed airline in the UAE, serving 15 destinations in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Egypt. It also operates 154 weekly flights within the Gulf. SilkAir, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, has proposed to run flights connecting Bhubaneswar with Singapore via Kolkata and Vishakapatnam.