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Tribune News Service
Dharamsala, March 31
Dharamsala today got connected with Jaipur by air as Spicejet introduced a flight between the two cities.
The one-and-a-half-hour flight between the two tourist cities will operate on a daily basis.
The 90-seater SpiceJet aircraft took off from the Jaipur airport at 6.05 am with full passenger capacity and landed at the Dharamshala airport at 7.35 am. The aircraft left from Dharamsala at around 11.40 am and landed at Jaipur at 1.05 pm.
Deepak, a tour operator, said that the flight would operate daily and price of tickets for the month of April ranged between Rs 3,500 and Rs 4,000 for one-way trip. The air connectivity between Jaipur and Delhi would help boost tourism in Dharamsala.
“Rajasthan hosts the largest number of foreign tourists, even higher than Goa in winters. We are hoping that with the season ending in Rajasthan and beginning in Dharamsala, many of them would come to Himachal”, he said.
Interestingly, while the airfare between Dharamsala and Delhi remained at about Rs 10,000 for one-way trip and goes as up to Rs 20,000, the airfare to Jaipur has been kept low by domestic airlines company.
Today 50 passengers went from Dharamsala to Jaipur in Spicejet flight.
The airfares for Dharamsala remained high as bigger planes cannot land here. Only 70-seater planes can land here. Besides Gaggal airport in Kangra, there are two more domestic airports in Himachal at Shimla and Kullu.
Sources here said that the Airports Authority of India had demanded about 500-acre land in Shimla for the expansion of airstrip. However, such a huge chunk of land was not available in the area. The present strip of Shimla airport can handle just 42-seater plane.
Presently, besides Air India, no other company was maintaining 42-seater planes. Sources here said that companies do not maintain 42-seater planes as these were economically unviable.
The Kullu airport was located between two hills and it was very difficult to expand the runway. The plane has to take a drop before landing at Kullu airport. So bigger planes cannot land there, the sources here said.
The Himachal government had written to the Government of India that flights to Himachal should be subsidised as was the case with Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states. However, till date the demand has not been accepted by the government.
The only hope for bringing down the air fares to Dharamsala was a new policy of civil aviation ministry under which the union government has announced reduction of domestic airfare to just about Rs 25,00 for one-hour journey. However, the scheme has not been implemented for the Dharamsala-Delhi flights.
Ticket to cost Rs 4,000
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