As Visakhapatnam is gearing up for the international flight operations from its airport from March 25 to Dubai, the low budget carrier —Indigo — is likely to introduce Vizag-Singapore-Vizag flights from April.
The introduction of this route would immensely help the people in the coastal Andhra Pradesh and the adjoining Chhattisgarh and Odisha belts as they can catch connecting flights to the U.S and Australia/New Zealand from Singapore by going via Visakhapatnam instead of travelling all the way to Chennai or Hyderabad to catch an international flight.
According to Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology T. Subbarami Reddy, the initial glitches in the operation of the international flight from Visakhapatnam to Dubai by the national carrier Air India had been sorted out after he took up the matter with the Defence, Home, Civil Aviation and the Director of Intelligence Bureau on Monday and Tuesday.
“Now everything is clear and the first flight to Dubai from Visakhapatnam will be flagged off on March 25 by Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh at Visakhapatnam,” Mr. Reddy said.
As there are a lot of investments made in the steel city and the adjoining districts, with the help of the Singapore government, the direct flight to Singapore might be useful in bringing in more investments to the north coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Mr. Reddy said he had plans to bring the Singapore Prime Minister to Visakhapatnam during his next visit to India adding that he had had a meeting a few days ago in this regard with the Singapore High Commissioner for India Karen Tan.
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.
