Aurangabad, Nov 19:
The heritage monuments and sites in and around Aurangabad are closed for the past seven months. The delay in their re-opening, however, is affecting the air connectivity of the city with important destinations and pushing the aviation industry to suffer financial losses.
The tourist season began in September. The tourists are eager, but could not plan a visit to the Tourism Capital due to closure of all monuments and tourist sites. Although, all the other heritage sites in India had been re-opened. Presently, domestic and international flights are operating without tourists.
The city is air linked to Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad cities as Air India and Indigo operates the flights. However, these airlines are going hesitating in maintaining the air connectivity due to less capacity of customers and tourists on the flights.
Previously SpiceJet was operating Bengaluru-Aurangabad-Bengaluru flight, and TruJet was operating Ahmedabad-Aurangabad-Ahmedabad flight. Now, the airlines had withdrawn, the services and chances of resuming these routes are bleak. Besides, the Indigo has reduced the daily operation of Mumbai-Aurangabad-Mumbai to three days a week from November 16. Poor passengers capacity prompted it to do so. Moreover, the historic city is already waiting to get connected with Bengaluru (South India) through the air after Hyderabad.
The entrepreneur Sunit Kothari explained, " There are around 600 heritage sites in the country. More than three lakh tourists had visited Rajasthan, since June 1. The heritage sites in our district are yet to be re-opened. Meanwhile, this is affecting the airline services. Presently, the passengers on-board are industrialists, business fraternity etc. If the heritage sites in our district are re-opened, then it would help increase the flight services."
Adds the president of Aurangabad Tourism Development Forum (ATDF) Jaswant Singh, " Aurangabad is Tourism capital of Maharashtra. Hence, tourism is the priority of the visitors arriving here, but the heritage sites and tourist places in our district are closed. It is affecting our air services. The other states had re-opened monuments for tourists. Meanwhile, the daily flight to Mumbai has reduced to three days a week. However, the persuasion to re-open the monuments and tourist places is going on."