Travelling to central and north Karnataka region from Mysuru is set to get easier with IndiGo announcing its flight services to Hubballi.
The flight connectivity was confirmed by the Mysuru Airport Director R. Manjunath and has also been announced on the airline’s website.
Mr. Manjunath said that IndiGo will initially operate on the Mysuru-Hubballi sector thrice a week and will increase the schedule depending on the passenger response.
The flight will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays according to the airline’s website as per which the flight will depart from Hubballi at 4.55 p.m. to land at Mysuru at 6.05 p.m. It will depart from Mysuru at 6.25 p.m. to land at Hubballi at 7.40 p.m.
With this, Mysuru has flight connections to Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Goa and the passenger footfalls has reached the pre-pandemic levels indicating the revival of the sector.
Mr. Manjunath said that apart from Hubballi, they are keen to tap other potential routes for which there is a huge public demand and this includes flight to Shirdi and Mangaluru besides operations to Belagavi. From the stakeholders in the commerce and industrial sector, there is demand for Coimbatore and Pune.
In all, 14,600 passengers utilised the airport during March 2022 and any further expansion will depend on introduction of additional flights. All the flights have nearly 100 per cent occupancy rates even if some of the routes are not subsidised under the Centre’s Regional Connectivity Scheme UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik).
However, introduction of additional flights to Mysuru hinges on airlines operating short-haul ATR type of planes. This is because of the short runway of the Mysuru airport which has a length of 1,740 meters while operating larger planes require a runway of atleast 2,400 meters. Though both the Centre and the State have given their consent for runway extension and airport expansion, no funds have been released for land acquisition.
