The long standing dream of the people of Visakhapatnam to fly to international destinations from the airport there will become a reality as the Union Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh has agreed to allow operation of Vizag-Dubai Air India flight and inaugurate the first flight on March 27 in the steel city.
Rajya Sabha member and former Union Minister from Andhra Pradesh T. Subbarami Reddy, who pursued the issue for the last two years with various ministries like Civil Aviation, Home (for setting up immigration facility), Finance (for customs point) and Defence (in charge of airport) to bring the recently modernised airport under the ambit of international flight operations, told ‘ The Hindu ' after meeting Mr. Singh, that the decision would immensely benefit people in the city as well as those in the surrounding districts in Andhra Pradesh as well as Odisha.
He pointed out that two years back when the then Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel visited Vizag to participate in his (Mr. Reddy) birthday celebrations he promised to bring international flights to the coastal city. “That promise has been fulfilled now,” he said.
Sources said since Dubai is well connected to international destinations, particularly to United States and Europe, people visiting to and from Vizag, would benefit a lot from this daily flight operation as many NRIs in the U.S. belong to this North Coastal Andhra region.
Presently, the administrative control of the Vizag airport, including the air traffic control, comes under the Indian Navy's air station INS Dega and the integrated new terminal of the airport was inaugurated on February 20, 2009.
A new expanded runway, 10,500 feet long, was added to the airport on June 15, 2007, and after that Air Bus A320 flights started landing in the airport. Presently Air India, Spicejet, Indigo, Kingfisher Airlines and Jetlite flights operate from the airport to various domestic destinations like Delhi, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Tirupati and Hyderabad.
