The curtailing of international flights from Amritsar international airport will hamper development and movement of overseas pilgrims to major tourist and commercial centre of northern India.
The fast growth of this airport of the country in three to four years will come to a halt. Statistics suggest it was showing signs of decline in passenger traffic. Tourism, trade and industry, mainstay of this city, will get a setback due to reduction of international flights and connectivity to destinations across the world which bring in businessmen and thousands of Punjabi NRIs and others.
The issues which have made the airlines like Singapore Airlines and Jet Airways to take this drastic decision include the high cost of landing which was double than that of major metro airports, lack of cargo traffic and a host of other causes.
A couple of other small airlines, including Trans Aero, Slovakia and Al Monark, have either terminated or cut down flight schedules due to economic crisis worldwide. The other two regular airways, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, flying to breakaway Russian countries providing connections to Europe and England were also reducing weekly 12 flights to seven to eight in the coming months due to low passenger intake from Amritsar and other destinations abroad.
A spokesman of the international flights originating from the CIS countries said they generally got aviation fuel from outside India in view of the high cost here to work out better economics for flight operations. He said they were operating six to seven flights a week, but forced to cut down to three flights and might review the situation subject to the number of passengers in November.
BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to look into various issues forcing big international airlines to cut down or discontinue flight operations from this upgraded airport of the city.
Criticising certain vested interests allowing growth of North India’s key airport Sidhu said the PM should intervene and take steps to save this airport from becoming redundant after spending several crores to modernise it. He said the decision of the airlines to decrease flight frequency would greatly impair Punjab’s connectivity to various parts of the world besides it would halt the cargo movement affecting export from the city.
The hospitality industry with some leading hotel chains including Radisson, Marriott, Holiday Inn and Taj Group coming up in the city will get major setback, besides the local hotel industry will become unviable.
By Ashok Sethi