International flights from Chandigarh to Sharjah, discontinued in October last year, will resume next month as per the new summer flight schedule released by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). The summer schedule will come into effect from April 1 and continue till October 26. Rajesh Ranjan Sahay, Chief Executive Officer of Chandigarh International Airport Limited told The Indian Express, "We are restarting the Sharjah flight on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Though the flight was to resume from this month, due to operational reasons they have decided to restart it from May. Also, two new domestic destinations – Dharamshala and Jammu – have been added.” The Sharjah flight, operated by Air India Express, will run twice a week. As per the schedule, the flight will depart at 6 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Presently, Chandigarh-Dubai flights operate seven days a week. With the Sharjah service resuming, the city will have two links to the region. Direct flights to Dharamshala, Jammu Sahay said an IndiGo flight to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh will be operational four times a week. Costing approximately Rs 3,200, it will help passengers reach the destination in an hour. The flight will depart from Chandigarh airport at 12.45 pm and reach at 1.50 pm. Similarly, the direct flight to Jammu will be operational thrice a week and the 55-minute service will cost around Rs 3,300. As per the schedule, as many as 22 new flights have been added in the domestic sectors, taking the total departures and arrivals to 96 on the existing routes. These include four more flights to Delhi, three to Srinagar, and one each to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Dharamshala, Leh and Jaipur. The Chandigarh airport already has direct connections to Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Leh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Chennai, Patna, Pune and Srinagar. Primarily four airlines — IndiGo, Vistara, Air India and Alliance Air — operate from here.
