Commercial flights to and from Mysore resumed on Monday, with the SpiceJet Bombardier aircraft landing at the airport at 1 p.m., and taking off at 1.30 p.m.
Inbound passengers were greeted by the travel agents’ association with flowers and ‘yellu bella’, in view of Sankranti.
The resumption of commercial flights has filled the vacuum created by the suspension of the Kingfisher flight in November 2011 and meets the long-pending demand for air connectivity from the region.
The SpiceJet flight will operate thrice a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, between Bangalore and Mysore.
The departure from Bangalore will be at 12.20 p.m., and it will land in Mysore at 1.10 p.m. (the inaugural flight landed ahead of schedule). The same flight will take off at 1.30 p.m. to reach Bangalore at 2.20 p.m..
The SpiceJet crew were upbeat about the response. While 17 passengers took the inbound flight from Bangalore on the 78-seater aircraft, the outbound flight had 27 passengers.
These numbers are expected to go up to 50 in the coming days.
However, the timings — the afternoon departure is similar to Kingfisher’s timings — have come in for criticism from stakeholders, especially businessmen, who prefer an early morning outbound flight from Mysore to facilitate same-day return from Chennai, Mumbai or Hyderabad.
Travel agents at the airport too hoped that the flight schedule would be revised to ensure greater passenger traffic.
Occupancy rates were above average for the Kingfisher flight, which was a daily service, despite the timings. Revised timings would ensure near cent per cent occupancy, they believe.
