A daily flight connecting Jamshedpur with Kolkata and Bhubaneswar was launched from this steel city on Tuesday by Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren. IndiaOne Air, an Ahmedabad-based regional airline, will start operating a nine-seater Grand Caravan Ex (C208B) single-engine aircraft on the Bhubaneswar-Jamshedpur-Kolkata-Jamshedpur-Bhubaneswar route from Wednesday, Deputy CEO of the company, Prem Kumar Garg, said.
While the Jamshedpur-Kolkata part of the route will be operated under the regional connectivity scheme UDAN, the Bhubaneswar-Jamshedpur leg will be not. Addressing the inaugural function here, Soren said the discussion he had with Scindia during their meetings about improving air connectivity in the state turned into reality with the launch of the flight in Jamshedpur.
As far as airports are concerned, the state government has five/six airports in good condition and initiatives were on to develop more such facilities in the state, he said adding one airport was also proposed in Sahebganj district. Scindia said that earlier the country used to witness the closure of airlines one after another, but now three new regional airlines -- IndiaOne Air, Star Air and Flyaway -- have emerged since the UDAN scheme was launched in April 2017.
The objective of the UDAN scheme is to connect small and medium cities with big cities through air service. Sonari Airport in Jamshedpur is the 73rd new airport that started functioning during eight years of the Narendra Modi government, Scindia said. The number of airports will be doubled from 74 in 2013-14 to 148 when an airport at Shimoga in Karnataka will be inaugurated later this month, he said.
