India’s Calicut airport to have direct air links with Sri Lanka

India’s Calicut International Airport may soon have direct air links with Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Colombo if the assurances made at a meeting of people’s representatives and airport-airline officials held in Karipur on Monday are implemented.

Malaysia’s budget airline AirAsia has evinced interest to operate services from Karipur to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, while Sri Lanka’s low-cost airline FitsAir has come forward to fly between Colombo and Karipur.

The budget airlines of Malaysia and Sri Lanka stepped in to tap the potentials of Karipur even as many other foreign airlines remained wary of the Calicut International Airport’s future in the wake of the inordinate delay in resuming services of wide-body flights from Karipur.

The meeting, chaired by Airport Advisory Committee chairman Abdussamad Samadani, MP, also made assurances about increasing domestic flight services to Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi, and international services to Jeddah.

AirAsia and FitsAir have expressed willingness to begin services from Karipur with the hope of ensuring connections to countries like Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, China, Philippines and Japan.

Mr. Samadani and other people’s representatives such as M.K. Raghavan, MP; Elamaram Kareem, MP; and T.V. Ibrahim, MLA, said that the arrival of AirAsia and FitsAir would be a good beginning for Karipur in its new phase of development. They said that the airlines of other countries too would come to Karipur in the coming years.

The meeting raised several demands, including connectivity to Goa, Srinagar, Ahmedabad, Pune and Kolkata. The MPs pointed out that the service to Kolkata would help a large number of migrant workers from north-eastern States.

Air India Express officials said that they would increase the services to Thiruvananthapuram from Karipur. While airlines such as IndiGo, Flynas, and SpiceJet promised more services from Karipur, Saudi Arabian Airlines said that it would have to wait until large flights are allowed to be operated from Karipur.

Source: The Hindu
-Agencies