Gannavaram airport: Overwhelming response to International flight services to Gulf countries

Viijayawada: International flights being operated from Gannavaram (Vijayawada) to Sharjah and Muscat are receiving huge response from the passengers, who are directly travelling to Gulf countries from the airport without depending on Hyderabad or any other airport.

Air India launched Gannavaram-Sharjah flight services on October 31 and later between Gannavaram and Muscat in November, 2022.

The occupancy ratio in the two flight services is more than 90 per cent, according to M lakshmikanth Reddy, Director of the Gannavaram Airport. He said there is massive response from the passengers, who are comfortably travelling in the Boeing aeroplane, which has a capacity of 180 seats.

International flight services from Gannavaram airport were launched during the previous TDP rule in 2017 and flight services were operated between Vijayawada and Singapore. After operating around six months, the services were cancelled in 2018 due to administrative reasons and viability gap.

In 2020, with the outbreak of pandemic Covid, all flight services were cancelled from Gannavaram airport. After a gap of nearly four years, international services resumed from Gannavaram airport to Sharjah and Muscat in 2022.

A large number of businessmen, tourists, workers, employees and students are travelling between Vijayawada-Sharjah and Vijayawada-Muscat. Vijayawada-Sharjah services are operated twice a week and Vijayawada-Muscat once a week.

Passengers from erstwhile districts of Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam and West Godavari are utilising the services from the Gannavaram airport.

Telugu people who are from south coastal districts and have settled down in Europe, US and Canada can travel to Gulf countries first and later they can board flights to land at Gannavaram.

Before international flights were launched from Gannavaram, the passengers used to go to Hyderabad, Chennai or Bengaluru to travel to other countries. This is not only time consuming but expensive too. Sometimes, the passengers had to stay in hotels too in Hyderabad. Now, without going to Hyderabad, passengers are comfortably boarding flights in Gannavaram and landing in Sharjah and Muscat.

Gulf countries have excellent connectivity to Europe, US and Canada. So, passengers from south coastal districts can travel to Gulf and later catch flights to reach the USA, Canada and Europe. Sometimes, the passengers may not get flight tickets to US, Canada and Western countries due to high demand. The Vijayawada-Sharjah services will help these passengers to go to Gulf and later catch flights to western countries.

According to information, Air India is planning to increase its services to other countries from Gannavaram airport because the existing two services to Sharjah and Muscat evoked massive response from the passengers.

Gannavaram Airport has been developed after the bifurcation of the State. Passenger traffic also increased manifold since 2014. However, Covid badly hit the development and services.

After a gap of two years due to Covid pandemic and post Covid economic impact, Gannavaram Airport is back with bustling activity, said Airport Director M Lakshmikanth Reddy. He said night landing facility and luggage checking facility help the airport to operate more international flights and airlines.

Andhra Chamber of Commerce and Industry, two Parliament members Kesineni Srinivas of Vijayawada and V Balashouri of Machilipatnam vigorously lobbied to resume international services at the airport. Both MPs are putting in efforts to transform Gannavaram Airport into one of the biggest airports in South India. Gannavaram Airport which is one of the fastest growing airports in the country is likely to cross one million passenger traffic mark soon with increase in flight operations. At present the passenger footfall is around 2,700 per day and it may increase to 3,000 per day. Passenger traffic at the airport was only 2.30 lakh per year in 2014-15.