Fly to Agra at night from this month

Tourists may now regularly fly to Agra as the the Union Ministry of Tourism and Culture has cleared night landing of flights at Agra's Kheria airport starting from this month. The move aims to promote tourism in the city of the Taj Mahal. At present, Agra has only one domestic flight by Kingfisher in operation.

According to the ministry officials, it's been a pending demand of the tourism industry to allow flights, particularly international, to land at night in Agra. The Kheria airport, which is a Civil Enclave controlled by the Indian Air Force, is currently partially used for civilian flights.

At present, Agra has only one domestic flight by Kingfisher and that too may be suspended after February.

"Foreign tourists are surprised when told Agra, the most important tourist destination in India and land of the glorious Taj Mahal, does not have a civilian airport. The main problem is that they do not allow parking of planes," said Federation of Tourism Associations president Rajiv Tiwari.

Lack of equipment to facilitate night landing has been one of the major reasons behind the delay. Local Congress leaders and representatives of the tourism industry met party general secretary Rahul Gandhi in December to look into the matter.

Airport Authority of India's general manager, public relations, G.S. Bawa, said, "Now three flights can operate at the same time. One is already operational so from now onwards, we can handle two more flights simultaneously. Airlines are most welcome to bring additional airlines as soon as they complete the required formalities with the DGCA." There are 28 civil enclave airports in the country out of which 20 are operational in tourist spots. "Only when there is a need to build or work towards controlling air traffic we build additional airports apart from civil enclaves in small towns," added Bawa.

However, some airlines haven't considered flying to Agra. "Although we continually evaluate sectors that we can add or enhance on our network, at the moment Jet Airways may not have plans to fly to Agra," said the spokesperson of Jet Airways.

AAI has undertaken the development of 58 airports which includes 35 non-metro and 23 airports in three-tier cities. Work has been completed in 27 airports which include tourist places like Amritsar, Dehradun, Jaipur, Shillong, Port Blair, Srinagar and others.


9 January 2011 — The Sunday Guardian.