Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Oct 7: Office of the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) lost an important file submitted by the Bhubaneswar based interstate airline – Air Odisha – for starting its operations from Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) here in November.
A top official of the airline visited the DGCA office Friday to check the status of their application. The DGCA officials then realised that they had lost the file submitted by the airline April 8, 2015.
The loss of an important document from one of the top offices in the country surprised many and the whole office started searching for the file. However, the search mission ended Tuesday and the airline was asked to resubmit the file. “It is true that DGCA lost our operation manual and we resubmitted another copy Tuesday”, said Santosh Pani, founder, Air Odisha.
The airline has a seating capacity of nine and is planning to cover five destinations in the state including Rourkela, Angul, Jeypore, Jharsuguda, Sambalpur.
Unfortunately, the airline was not even provided a hanger in BPIA. “We had discussed with the officials and we expect to get a hanger within two or three days. Even our contract with the state government has provision for a hanger for our aircraft,’’ added Santosh.
The state government had set November as deadline for the airline to launch its operations.
As per schedules prepared for the flight, the aircraft will fly to Jharsuguda en route Sambalpur. It will then take off for Bhubaneswar after a 30-minute halt at Jharsuguda. In the afternoon, it will fly to Rourkela en route Angul and then Jeypore before returning to Bhubaneswar.