While flight services to Mysuru continue to be in a state of suspended animation after Alliance Air — a subsidiary of Air India — discontinued the operations on termination of financial arrangement with the State government, questions have been raised on the viability of the city airport.
Social activist Maj.Gen (Retd.) Sudhir G. Vombatkere has questioned the wisdom of spending tax payers’ money in trying to revive the airport catering to a limited number of people.
He said there was little justification for the State government to insist on operating and perhaps also extending and upgrading the airport at enormous cost as it would become redundant when the doubled and electrified Bengaluru-Mysuru rail link can provide far better connectivity for passengers to Kempegowda Airport from Mysuru than Mandakalli can provide.
Mr. Vombatkere said dreams involving public money, must be backed by careful planning and understanding of economic realities, with public transparency. There are better ways to budget and spend public money for fuel-efficient, rapid and cheap transportation of large numbers of people between Mysore and Bengaluru, than to cater for expensive air transportation for limited numbers of people.
Recalling the recent efforts that have gone into putting Mysuru on the air map of India, Mr. Vombatkere said though Rs.82 crore has been invested in upgrading the Mysuru Airport, flight operators have discontinued services as evident with Kingfisher, SpiceJet and now Alliance Air, due to inadequate passenger load.
While private players cannot be goaded into operating services on commercially unviable routes, Air Alliance being a public sector airline, can be “persuaded” to operate the sector by subsidising the loss by way of incentive or “viability gap funding”. But such funding was questionable and the larger question of which section of the public benefits from this could be politically embarrassing for a government which cannot find funds for drought relief, farmers, schools, health facilities, etc. pointed our Mr. Vombatkere.
‘There is little justification for the State govt. to insist on operating the airport’
