Kolkata: Flight-ban lift a boon for businessmen, patients – Times of India

Kolkata News

Kolkata: The lifting of partial restrictions on flights from Mumbai and Chennai to Kolkata, both high-density routes, will not only make life easier for businessmen and corporate executives travelling between the cities, but also help Kolkatans travelling abroad and Bangladeshis travelling to Chennai via Kolkata for healthcare.
For the past 13 months, travel between the two cities and Kolkata had been restricted to three days a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Saturday, the state home department issued a notification withdrawing the curbs and allowing flights originating from these two cities to fly directly to Kolkata every day. The restriction on flights now remains for three cities — Pune, Nagpur and Ahmedabad.
With potentially 52 additional flights between Mumbai and Kolkata — once airlines are able to redeploy the fleet and rejig their schedules — the hassle of flying to Kolkata from Mumbai for business travellers will be greatly eased. Till now, businessmen had to schedule their meetings in such a way that they arrived in either Kolkata or Mumbai early on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday and then took the late evening flight back. Or else, they either risked getting stuck for one, and at times two, additional days before being able to catch a direct flight back. The other option was to take a one-stop flight via some other city.
The airlines also resorted to multiple ways to survive the challenge — from clubbing passengers of multiple flights on the same sector together to operating flights to Kolkata via a detour through other nearby sectors and even picking up passengers on the way for a functional revenue generation.
“The lifting of curbs on the Mumbai-Kolkata flights will ensure that company executives don’t have to rush through the day in Mumbai to take a direct return flight the same day. Now, they can afford to stay over and take a flight the next morning,” said Travel Agents’ Federation of India chairman (east) Anil Punjabi.
For corporate and leisure travellers from Kolkata who are looking forward to foreign travel, restoration of normal connectivity with Mumbai is a boon as it opens up a lot of international destinations.
“Till now, scheduling arrivals via Mumbai had been complicated with the need for RT-PCR tests on arrival and furnishing the report to then fly to Kolkata. With fully vaccinated travellers no longer required to undergo RT-PCR test, it eases a lot of complications,” said Travel Agents’ Association of India chairman (east) Manav Soni.
On a similar removal of restrictions on flights between Chennai and Kolkata, travel agents said it will benefit Bangladeshis reaching Kolkata and then flying on the domestic sector to Chennai for treatment. Airlines can potentially add 48 additi-onal flights a week on the Chennai-Kolkata sector on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
“Medical tourism will get a fillip. When the severe restrictions were imposed and international flights were cancelled, there were plane-loads of Bangladeshis stuck in Chennai who had to then be evacuated on special flights,” Punjabi said.

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Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/flight-ban-lift-a-boon-for-bizmen-patients/articleshow/87441511.cms