Abhijit Chowdhury
Post News Network
New Delhi, Dec 15: The Centre has rejected a proposal of Fly Dubai, a designated carrier of UAE (Dubai) to start operation from Bhubaneswar international airport.
International flight operation is dependent on the bilateral agreements between the government of India and government of foreign countries and issue of traffic rights by the union civil aviation ministry.
Fly Dubai of UAE (Dubai) had approached the Indian Aviation ministry to allow it commence operations from Bhubaneswar. The request of Fly Dubai was, however, not acceded to by the Indian authorities as the proposal was not made through the UAE civil aviation authority.
Interestingly, no Indian carrier had shown its interest to start international operations from Bhubaneswar.
A meeting with the representatives of Indian scheduled carriers was held in the aviation ministry November 26 in which it emerged that traffic potential available from Bhubaneswar is not enough to establish the viability of a direct international flight from Bhubaneswar.
Last year, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had urged the Centre to include Bhubaneswar in the draft aviation policy as an international airport.
The state government is at a loss to understand why the Central government is not able to abide by its own decision of operationalising the international airport at Bhubaneswar after publishing the international airport notification in Extraordinary Gazette of India dated November 14, 2013.
