More airlines for Durgapur
Neena Sharma, General Manager-Airport Operations, Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited, Durgapur, says Zoom Air's flights would boost traffic to the city.
India’s latest scheduled carrier Zoom Air started flying Delhi-Durgapur-Kolkata and brought back Kazi Nazrul Islam Airport in Durgapur in the limelight, which was earlier served only by Air India. The airport is partly owned by Singapore’s Changi Airports International which has 36.32 per cent stake in BAPL.
Ecstatic about Zoom Air’s arrival at the airport, Neena Sharma, says, “Earlier all the people from this area, i.e. Durgapur, Asansol, Raniganj, Bardhaman and Dhanbad would go to Kolkata, which means at least 3-4 hour journey, and then take a flight forward. With this airport being commissioned, and with the Zoom Air flight from here, the time gets reduced to half an hour maximum.”
Sharma informs that Durgapur would be serving as a feeder airport for international flights. “We are anyway connecting to the metros like Kolkata and Delhi, which offer international connections. The same happened when Air India was operating from here,” she says. The BAPL is in talks with Air India and hopes that the national carrier resumes its service to Durgapur soon. “We had done 84 per cent from this airport for Air India earlier with a 120 seat carrier. We hope that Zoom Air, which is operating a 50 seater aircraft, would definitely boost our business and passenger base,” Sharma adds.
For expansion, they are in talks with other airlines as well. “Zoom Air had done their trial and training flights at this airport. We are talking to other airlines to come here and start their training flights. It would save them a lot of money as the fuel is cheaper here,” Sharma says.
We are talking to other airlines to come here and start their It would save them a lot of money as the fuel is cheaper here
Besides, two companies are assessing the cargo capacity at the Durgapur airport and they were interested in setting up cargo on BAPL’s behalf as well. “This area is known as the Sky City, where a lot of logistic companies were coming up. Thus, cargo is on the cards, because finally the revenue always comes from cargo,” Sharma claims.