Politics keeps airport ‘grounded’

Chandigarh: City's quest to mark its presence on international flight map appears to have been smitten by "political" bug. In December 2011, just before announcement of elections in Punjab, chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had written to Centre to accord necessary approvals for starting an international flight from Chandigarh.
However, no positive signal has been received from the Centre in the past two months. Sources confirmed that operation of international flight would depend upon the result of Punjab assembly polls, which would be announced in March. It also added that the issue has taken political colours and everyone wants to take political mileage for the international flight.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) had decided to start international flight from its newly-opened domestic terminal at Chandigarh airport till the time work at Mohali international airport is completed.
For that, in October 2011 Air Arabia airlines offered to start Sharjah-Chandigarh-Sharjah flight thrice a week and the timings of the flight were also decided, according to which flight would reach at 5.10pm at Chandigarh and would take off at 5.50pm for Sharjah.
12/02/12 Ajay Sura/Times of India

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Categories: airports Feb 2012, New Feb 2012