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Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Pathankot, October 26
The Civil Aviation Ministry has extended the frequency of the Pathankot to New Delhi and return flight from earlier three days a week to daily at the insistence of Gurdaspur MP Sunny Deol. The flight is operated by Alliance Airlines.
Officials said the development would help boost the sagging economy of the parliamentary constituency and also parts of neighbouring states of J&K and HP.
On MP’s demand
Even during the pandemic, the three-day-a-week flight was operating at 80% capacity. Hence there is a need to increase its frequency.
Hospitality honchos, too, are happy as the Punjab Infrastructural Development Board has started work on turning the twin islands of Musharba and Kalara, located in the Ranjit Sagar Dam lake, into major world-class water sports and tourist hubs.
In 2014, then Dy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal had flown in hoteliers from New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune in a special flight to convince them about the area’s tourism potential. However, the project failed due to little or no connectivity of the city with other parts of the country.
“Highways have been constructed in recent years. This meant that tourists directly drove to the neighbouring states of J&K and HP without making a stop-over in the town as was the case earlier. This resulted in a massive loss of revenue for the nearly 100-odd hotels in the city,” said Anil Vasudeva, former mayor of Pathankot.
On June 23, Deol had written a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri requesting him to improve air connectivity “because he had to face flak from the business community of his constituency.”
“This was enough to convince the ministry officials to make the flight a regular one. In the not so distant past, the city’s economy used to be based on tourism, timber and transport. However, with travellers giving the city a miss, businesses fell flat,” said Vasudeva.
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