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5 months on, Sharjah flight to finally resume from Chandigarh
To be operated by Air India Express twice a week, the Sharjah flight will depart at 6 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Discontinued in October 2023, the international flight to Sharjah is set to resume from Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport from March 31.
To be operated by Air India Express twice a week, the Sharjah flight will depart at 6 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
With this, the airport will now have two international links, as the Dubai flight is already operating seven days a week.
The announcement was made in the revised summer schedule released by the Airport Authority of India (AAI) on Thursday. It will come into force on March 31 and continue till October 26.
However, flights to North Goa (MOPA) and Hisar will not be part of the summer schedule. Also, Akasa Air will not be starting flight operations from the airport. The airport currently hosts four airlines — IndiGo, Vistara, AirIndia and Alliance Air.
Two new domestic destinations
Airport’s chief executive officer (CEO) Rakesh Ranjan Sahay said two new domestic destinations — Dharamshala and Jammu — will be added from March 31. Alliance Air will connect the region to Dharamshala, while IndiGo will link the tricity to Jammu.
The airport already caters to several major routes, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Leh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Chennai, Patna, Pune and Srinagar.
In view of the airport’s growing importance in regional air travel, 22 new flights have been added on domestic sectors in the summer schedule, taking the total departures and arrivals to 96.
These include four more flights to Delhi, three to Srinagar, and one each to Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Dharamshala, Mumbai, Leh and Jaipur. The Goa flight to Dabolim airport remains in the flight schedule.
In another noteworthy development, six aircraft (five of IndiGo, one of Vistara) are slated to take a night halt at the airport during summer, an increase from five (four of IndiGo, one of Vistara) in the existing winter arrangement, showcasing the airport’s growing importance in regional air travel.
