Infrastructure at Kannur airport remains underutilised, says NMCC

Central nod sought for more international services

The North Malabar Chamber of Commerce (NMCC) has said that big infrastructure created at the Kannur International Airport remains underutilised at present because of the shortage of international flights from here.

Flights operating from the airport had shown good passenger load due to the large catchment area covering North Malabar and neighbouring Kodagu district in Karnataka, said NMCC president K. Vinod Narayanan.

Foreign airlines

“We hope that the Central government will give permission for foreign airline companies to operate international services from the Kannur airport at the earliest,” he said, exuding hope that the operation of services by foreign airlines would be a big boon for the NRI population and the tourism industry of North Malabar.

While the Kannur airport was awaiting permission from the Central government for foreign airlines to begin operations, there were misleading reports suggesting that neighbouring airports were ignored to promote Kannur airport, said Mr. Narayanan in a press release.

While an earlier meeting of airlines held in January focused on Kannur airport as it was newly commissioned at the time, the meeting of officials of airlines and airports convened by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and presided over by the Chief Minister of Kerala on August 31 was primarily to discuss the need for increasing flights from Thiruvananthapuram International Airport in view of the recent reduction in flights from there, he said, adding that flights from other airports in the State were also discussed.

Mr. Narayanan said the number of additional flights from Kerala to be operated by airlines from the next winter schedule was primarily from Thiruvananthrapuram airport. Kochi and Kannur airports would also get a few additional domestic flights, he said, adding that Air India’s flight from Kannur and Kozhikode to New Delhi would become a daily flight in place of five flights a week at present.

IndiGo and SpiceJet had not shifted operations from Kozhikode airport to Kannur airport as had been reported in a section of the media, he said.

In fact, SpiceJet currently did not operate any flights from the Kannur airport, the NMCC president said.

IndiGo has only two international services, and the domestic services are primarily operated as UDAN flights, the rights for which they had secured in a competitive tender floated by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. He said UDAN flights did not bring any revenue to the airport.