Flight services from Mysuru resumed on Thursday with Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, launching its services to Bengaluru, to put the city back on the air map of India. Stakeholders can expect the services to be reliable as the State government has committed itself to provide viability gap funding of Rs. 9.5 lakh per month for one year to help the airline make good the loss due to poor patronage, if any.
The inbound flight carried 9 passengers including Revenue Minister V. Srinivas Prasad and Minister for Tourism R.V. Deshpande, while there were 15 outbound passengers on the inaugural day of the flight. Alliance Air will operate 6 days a week except on Sundays and will take off from Bengaluru at 6 a.m. to land at Mysuru at 6.40 a.m. It will take off from the city at 7 a.m. to reach Bengaluru at 7.40 a.m.
This is the solitary commercial flight available from the city at present as the two other airlines – Kingfisher and SpiceJet – which operated at different points of time terminated their services for various reasons including lack of patronage.
The authorities are confident of a higher originating passenger load as people have become aware of the services. The reason for poor patronage for earlier services was cited to be uncertainty and frequent cancellations, besides odd timing with late afternoon departure. But the current flight timings was said to be ideally suited for outbound passengers as it would save them a 5-hour-long road journey and the anxiety associated with reaching the Kempegowda International Airport at Bengaluru. With the city receiving nearly 3.5 million tourists, the authorities are confident of shoring up the numbers with air connectivity. The city’s industrial growth too has been stagnating due to lack of air connectivity and the stakeholders are confident that regular flights would make Mysuru more attractive for potential investors.
