Cooch Behar airport set to take off

Kolkata: After lying idle for over two decades, flight operations are expected to resume at Cooch Behar Airport in late August or early September. Though efforts to kickstart operations at the airport had failed three years ago when Air Deccan conducted a test flight but never went ahead with commercial operations, AAI regional executive director Gautam Mukherjee said he was hopeful that flights would begin within the next month or so.
"Non-scheduled flight operator Deccan Charter has applied to Director General of Civil Aviation and Airports Authority of India for a daily service between Kolkata and Cooch Behar with an 18-seater Beechcraft 1900 Delta aircraft. If the service becomes popular, they may introduce more flights and encourage other airlines who operate small aircraft to touch down at Cooch Behar," Mukherjee said.
Deccan Charter's Kolkata pointsman said the Beechcraft would do one trip to Cooch Behar in the morning and three trips to Jamshedpur thereafter.
Though the airline is yet to get a state government commitment for at least eight bookings per flight to make the operations viable, aviation industry experts said 48-seater ATR operations would be more viable as fares would be a lot lower than an 18-seater Beechcraft.
27/07/10 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jul 2010, New Jul 2010