As the country resumed the scheduled commercial international flights from March 27, Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) announced its summer schedule with 1,190 weekly flights against 848 during the winter schedule and expected more passenger traffic in both the international- and domestic sectors. CIAL’s summer schedule includes 20 airlines operating to destinations abroad among which 16 are international carriers operating 261 weekly departures.
Indigo Airlines is on top of the list with 42 weekly departures to international destinations whereas Air India Express will have 38 departures weekly; AirAsia Berhad 21, Etihad 21, Emirates 14, Oman Air 14, Qatar Air 14, Air Saudi Arabia 14, Kuwait Air 8, Thai Air Asia 4, Sri Lankan Air 10, Gulf Air 7, Singapore Airlines 7, Spicejet 6 and FlyDubai 3.
A communication from CIAL said there would be 44 weekly departures to Dubai. Abu Dhabi comes second with 42 operations. Air India will continue its three weekly operations to London and Thai Air Asia will resume its operations from Kochi in June, with four weekly direct flights to Bangkok. “After a hiatus of two years AirAsia Berhad will also have daily services to Kuala Lumpur in March itself,” the communication added.
The CIAL schedule for the summer has 668 domestic operations for the season offering connectivity with 13 cities in the country which includes 63 weekly flights to Delhi, 55 to Mumbai, 39 to Hyderabad, 49 to Chennai, 79 to Bangalore, and seven to Kolkata. There will be daily flights to Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Mysore, Kannur, Hubli, Agati, and Ahmedabad.
CIAL, which had been handling 10 million passengers a year during the pre-pandemic days, implemented a slew of measures to increase the traffic during the period. CIAL handled a total of 43,06,661 passengers during the whole year of 2021. Of that, 18,69,690 were international passengers. CIAL’s passenger volume has almost increased by a million in 2021 when compared to that of 2020, the communication added.
The Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) has also started dialogues with major international airline companies to improve direct flight services to European countries to cater to both leisure and business travellers from Cochin, the commercial capital of God’s Own Country.
According to official sources of CIAL, there is a huge demand for direct connectivity to London and Frankfurt, and efforts are on to lure airline operators to launch direct services to these cities. As an initial step to attract the airline operators, recently CIAL has waived parking and landing fees for airlines operating in the European sector.
“European connectivity has been a long-pending demand from tour operators and ex-pats. We have waived parking and landing fees for airlines operating direct services to London. We hope the gesture will give an impetus to our efforts to attract carriers from other parts of the world. If things work out, we will be able to host more foreign airlines,” said Mr. S. Suhas IAS, Managing Director of CIAL.
Mr. Suhas also said that “We expect at least three direct flight services to European countries a day by 2022 if the operators deploy Dreamliner aircraft”.
As per the latest passenger statistics, CIAL has handled around 1.85 lakh passengers in Kochi – Europe sector a year, and on average nearly 900 passengers transit through Kochi to European destinations. UK, Germany, France, and Italy are the major inbound source market for Kerala tourism destinations and the direct connectivity will improve the tourist flow to Kerala. A survey conducted by CIAL in 2019 revealed that the demand in the Kochi-Europe sector is set to rise and there is a huge potential for direct flight operations. There is demand for services in the Kochi-US transit sector and Australia. Now most of the transit passengers to Europe and the US are travelling through gulf countries, especially via Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.
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