Chandigarh to become international gateway

Chandigarh: Travelling abroad from Punjab and Haryana will not mean travelling to Delhi anymore with Chandigarh airport being upgraded to an
international airport. The first flight for Dubai will take off July end.
Sunil Dutt, director of Chandigarh airport, said: "We have got confirmation from Fly Dubai. They have got permission from the union civil aviation ministry to fly a daily direct flight to Dubai from Chandigarh."
"The first international flight to Dubai will fly from here somewhere in the last week of July and the ticket rate is kept around Rs 3,500 to 3,600," Dutt said.
Fly Dubai is a low-cost carrier of Emirates Airlines.
Chandigarh international airport will replace the old domestic Chandigarh airport as the region's second international airport after the Raja Sansi International Airport in Amritsar.
The new airport is likely to give a big boost to the region's economy and facilitate travel for a large number of non-resident Indians (NRIs), who currently use New Delhi's Indira Gandhi international airport. It would largely serve the international passengers from the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
"The area of the new building will be five times more than the previous one. After 1974, it is for the first time that Chandigarh airport is undergoing such a big scale renovation," Gagan Malik, construction in-charge of the new building of Chandigarh International Airport, said.
Atul Sareen, managing partner of Sky Airways, a registered international travel agency with its offices in Chandigarh and the US, told IANS: "There is a big rush of passengers who want to travel to Dubai from this part of the region so this flight is expected to get a good response."
29/05/09 IANS/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2009, Foreign Jun 2009