By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram: Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of the national carrier, will increase to 119 per week its flights to the Middle East from Kerala starting Oct 28, taking note of the demand of the people from the state, an official statement said Saturday.
The airline in its winter schedule will increase its services from the three airports in Kerala and Mangalore in Karnataka to the Middle East from 92 services a week.
This is the first time since its inception in 2005 that Air India Express is deploying so many services from the cities of Kerala and Mangalore to the Gulf and back, said the statement.
This increase in capacity will help stabilise the fares to a very large extent which will benefit the travelling public of this region, the statement said.
The winter schedule begins Oct 28.
Keralite’s use the three Kerala airports and the Mangalore airport in Karnataka which borders the Kasargode district in Kerala.
In the detailed statement that came out, it mentioned that the Kozhikode airport during the winter schedule will operate 7,308 services up from 5,643 in its previous schedule.
Likewise the Kochi airport will see 6,105 services that also going up from 4,903 and in the capital city airport it shot up to 4,163 from 3,238 services.
The entire Kerala cabinet has expressed its displeasure on the abrupt cancellation and the alleged callous attitude of the Air India to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visited the state last month.
The opposition Communist Party of India-Marxist in the state had organised protests marches to all the three airports under its top leadership recently.
The main highlights of the winter schedule is that – Kochi will connect the cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Doha and Sharjah everyday.
Flight to Muscat will be thrice a week and passengers from Kochi will be offered convenient connections to Dammam via Kozhikode everyday, and to Kuwait three times a week, with both the boarding cards issued in Kochi and the baggage’s tagged to the ultimate destination.
The costal city of Karnataka, Mangalore will see Air India Express flying twice daily to Dubai, three times a week to Muscat, Abu Dhabi and twice weekly to Doha and Bahrain.