Soon, daily flights to nanded, CM’s hometown

Soon, there will be daily GoAir flights to Nanded, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan’s hometown. Air carrier Kingfisher has been flying its small jets to Nanded airport thrice a week, which the government has found insufficient.

Soon, there will be daily GoAir flights to Nanded, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan’s hometown. Air carrier Kingfisher has been flying its small jets to Nanded airport thrice a week, which the government has found insufficient.

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GoAir Chairman Jay Wadia presented a plan to the state over its willingness to extend daily flights. GoAir provided services to Nanded, but these were discontinued.

The official reason is that there is lesser connectivity to Nanded, a pilgrim city for Sikhs, and Solapur and Latur which see traffic from Hyderabad.

“GoAir has big planes like Boeing, which are 160 seaters. They will fly for this purpose, but just flying to Nanded might not be economically feasible. So three different routes were proposed to the government and they were discussed,” said Rural Development Secretary Sudhir Thackeray.

Thackeray said the routes suggested were Mumbai-Hyderabad-Nanded-Latur; Delhi-Hyderabad-Nanded-Mumbai and Amritsar-Delhi-Hyderabad-Nanded.

The government stressed on the Amritsar route as several devotees travel from Amritsar to Nanded to visit Takht Sri Hazur Sahib gurdwara, said Thackeray. “This route will make it easy for government officials to get to Mumbai for meetings,” he said.

The government has also received a proposal from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Nashik to use its airstrip for civil purposes. “Given the huge agricultural traffic from Nashik to other cities, it can be exploited for agro-cargo and through commercial flights,” Thackeray said.