Winter schedule kicks in: Vadodara airport to get 5 more flights from Sunday

Airport Director MSI Dawood said that with the implementation of the winter schedule from October 26, daily flights to Delhi, Goa and Hyderabad have been added to the schedule. Dawood said, “Five additional flights will be included in the coming schedule. This includes an additional Vadodara-Delhi flight to make the route a daily one; as well as daily flights to Hyderabad and Goa, which were initially thrice a week. An additional weekly flight to Chennai has also been added. So, the daily movement has been increased to 15 to and fro flights each.”

Dawood added that the airport witnesses a traffic of nearly 3500 passengers daily and has also seen three non-scheduled international flights landing in the last six months, after getting the status of an international airport in December last year.

Dawood added that the airport runway is equipped to handle landings of Airbus A320 aircrafts, which are in standard operation for short international flights. He said, “We have seen three non-scheduled international flights landing at Vadodara in the past six months. The government has announced a rebate of Rs 1 lakh per sector for airlines willing to start scheduled international flights from Vadodara and Rajkot airports… Airbus A320 size of aircrafts are easily landing in Vadodara… Some wide-bodied aircrafts used by the international carriers may not be able to land as the airport is within the city. It is upto the (Indian) airlines, which seem to be short on aircraft as of now to expand operations…”

Dawood added that immigration and customs teams have been deployed at the airport. He said, “Vadodara Lok Sabha MP Hemang Joshi has been taking up the matter with the Ministry of Civil Aviation to ensure that international flight operations begin soon. We have appointments in the customs and immigrations department and we are ready…” Dawood said.