After an interval of over five years, Air India will resume its jumbo flight operations from the Calicut international airport to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) from February 17.
Calicut airport director K. Srinivasa Rao told The Hindu on Friday that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had given approval to the national flag carrier to operate direct flights initially twice a week on Monday and Saturday. The flight will land at Calicut at 7.05 a.m. and depart for Jeddah at 5.30 p.m. Bookings have already started, he said.
The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has already approved the proposal of Air India to recommence flight operations under Code E. It will conduct services on Boeing 747-400, a wide-bodied jet airliner.
Earlier, Air India officials had proposed that its direct flights be allowed to arrive in the morning and depart only in the evening. Further, they sought a 12-hour parking at the airport. However, it was put on hold for various reasons.
The DGCA gave a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) to Air India after the airline conducted a safety assessment and submitted a report in August. But the company had to rectify certain anomalies.
So far, Air India has not been given permission to operate Haj flights from the airport. Only Saudia (Saudi Arabian Airlines), which had already secured an NOC last December, now operates Haj flights using its wide-bodied aircraft.
The Dubai-based Emirates is yet to resume services though it has also secured approval to operate big aircraft. The operation of wide-bodied aircraft was banned at the airport from May 2015 in the wake of the Court of Inquiry report on the accident involving an Air India flight at Mangaluru in May 2010.
Meanwhile, M.K. Raghavan, MP, has requested the Ministry of Civil Aviation to permit Indigo airlines to operate direct flights to Delhi from Calicut under the UDAN scheme.
