After seven years, Pathankot back on civil aviation map

ALLIANCE AIR FLIGHT TO SHUTTLE BETWEEN DELHI AND PATHANKOT THRICE A WEEK ON MONDAY, TUESDAY AND THURSDAY

PATHANKOT:DOMESTIC flights will resume from Pathankot airport after a gap of around seven years, with an Alliance Air flight landing here on Thursday.

The 70-seater airbus, which will take off from Delhi at 10 am.

The flight will be received here by Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh.

The flight will shuttle between Delhi and Pathankot thrice a week on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. From Pathankot, it will depart for Delhi at 12pm.

Amarinder, who will attend a programme in Gurdaspur to waive off loans of farmers on Thursday, will also lay the foundation stone of a Pepsico plant in Pathankot. Built at a cost of ₹37 crore over 11 years ago, the Pathankot airport had domestic flight operations for around twoand-a-half years.

Air Deccan, a private airline, ran its service, but suspended its operations due to poor occupancy of its flights.

Later, Air India also agreed to operate on this sector and started its flights in 2010, thanks to the efforts of then Gurdaspur MP Vinod Khanna. But it did not carry on for long. The airline halted its operations from the airport a year later in 2011, citing losses. And, there has not been any domestic flight since then.

The runway of the airport is being used by the army to transport goods and personnel off and on. There is also an occasional chartered flight carrying VIPS and film actors, during polls.