With over 40,000 satisfied passengers and about 1042 flights, the Kalaburagi Airport on Sunday successfully completed one year of operations.
The airport was inaugurated by Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa last year and was marked by the arrival of a direct Star Air flight from Bengaluru.
According to Vinod KJ, Assistant Manager of the Kalaburagi airport, over 25,000 people have benefited from UDAN, the Central government's regional airport development scheme.
"In the last year, we have had a very good response from passengers of Kalaburagi. About 40,000 passengers have traveled to this airport in the last one year, with an 80 per cent flight occupancy. More than 25,000 passengers have benefitted from the UDAN scheme," Vinod said.
"In the near future, we will be operating flights from Tirupati and hope to connect with Mumbai also. We have two fights daily to Bengaluru and thrice daily to Hindon.
It presently operates two daily flights to and from Bengaluru and three from Hindon.
Hanmanthrao, a passenger arriving from Bengaluru said that setting up of the airport drastically reduced the time of journeys from Bengaluru from 12 hours by train or bus, to just 1.5 hours.
"I used to come by train and bus and it used to take me about 12 hours. But now it takes me just 1.5 hours by flight. I have completely stopped traveling by road as this is much more convenient for me," he said.
Presently, flights from Star Air and Alliance Air operate between Kalaburagi and Bengaluru, while Star Air operates between Kalaburagi-Delhi(Hindon).
( With inputs from ANI )
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