Mangaluru
The Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) will augment its flight frequency in the coming winter schedule adding several domestic and international destinations. The winter schedule starts from the last week of October.
As per the sources, MIA will add an additional flight every Wednesday to Hyderabad, increasing the frequency from the existing 14 to 15 weekly flights.
IndiGo will supplement its Mangaluru-Bengaluru (IXE-BLR) route with three additional weekly ATR flights.
There are plans to resume the IndiGo flight to Mumbai, a sector that is in heavy demand. The services were halted between the Mumbai-Mangaluru sectors to ease the congestion at one of the busiest airports in the country. However, a negative aspect is the non-availability of flight bookings from Mangaluru to Pune during the winter season. When it comes to international destinations, the Mangaluru-Muscat (IXE-MCT) route will witness two additional weekly flights.
A senior executive from IndiGo said that there are plans to add more flights to several domestic destinations and it is in the final stages of finalisation. “All these destinations with additional flights are highly in demand when it comes to passenger load. We are also resuming operations to Mumbai, a sector that is in high demand but has less flight availability,” said the executive, adding that the final list will be announced soon.
The MIA, which is gradually witnessing an increase in passenger load, is expecting to hit a 2 lakh passenger footfall per month. We had touched about 1.9 lakh footfall by the end of Aug and are expecting to cross it to 2 lakh, said a source from MIA. Currently, the per day footfall is around 6,500.
As per the DGCA statistics, close to 60 percent of the passenger load is generated from the Mangaluru-Bengaluru and Mangaluru-Mumbai sectors alone.
