The number of airports in the country have gone up 100 per cent to 148 in a period of eight years from 74 in 2014, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said.
While inaugurating a daily flight between Bhubaneswar and Rourkela under the RCS UDAN scheme, Scindia said, "There were only 74 airports in the country till 2014, today this number including heliports and water aerodromes has increased to 148 which is a 100 per cent increase in eight years."
The Minister further said that before the pandemic there was a record established that 4,20,000 passengers travelled in a single day. "Now that record has been broken and four lakh fifty thousand passengers travelled in a day. In December 2022, more than four lakh passengers travelled each day of the month," he added.
The flight between Bhubaneswar and Rourkela commenced operation from Saturday and will operate seven days a week. It will act as an important link between Bhubaneswar and Rourkela during the upcoming Hockey World Cup, according to a statement from the Ministry of Civil Aviation released on Saturday evening.
Scindia congratulated the residents of both cities and said that there had been unprecedented growth in the Indian Civil Aviation scene in the last eight years under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In the context of the upcoming Hockey World Cup which will be organised in these cities of Odisha, the Minster said that earlier the travel time between Kalinga Stadium Bhubaneswar to Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium Rourkela used to be nine hours which will now be reduced to one hour ten minutes through flight.
The inauguration was carried out in the presence of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for State for Civil Aviation Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh (Rtd), Lok Sabha Members of Parliament Aparajita Sarangi, and Jual Oram, among others.
( With inputs from ANI )
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