New Delhi: First direct flight between Gorakhpur and Varanasi was flagged-off today. SpiceJet was awarded the route under the RCS-UDAN 4.1.
The airline will be operating daily flights and will deploy its Q400, 78-seater turbo prop aircraft designed for shorter distance flights on the route. SpiceJet is India’s largest regional carrier. The airline operates 63 daily flights under UDAN connecting 14 UDAN destinations to various parts of the country.At present SpiceJet is providing its services at Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Kanpur and Kushinagar airports in Uttar Pradesh.
This new flight route is a part of nine new UDAN flights that SpiceJet will be launching today out of which 6 will for Uttar Pradesh specially and 3 will be for other states of the country.
Speaking on the occasion, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia said, “Today is a historic day as we are connecting 2 ancient cities which have deep cultural and religious impact on the history of our country. Varanasi was connected with 11 cities but with the inauguration of this summer schedule, it will now further be connected with 4 more cities namely Gorakhpur, Jaipur, Guwahati and Jammu. Similarly, Gorakhpur which was connected with 6 cities will further connected with 3 more cities – Varanasi, Bangalore and Kanpur amounting to 9 cities in total.”
In Gorakhpur, we are looking to increase the capacity of the civil enclave of Gorakhpur Airport to 300 passengers from current 100 passenger by December 2022.”
The minister further emphasized that Uttar Pradesh which had 4 airports now has 9 airports established namely Prayagraj, Kanpur, Bareilly and Kushinagar.
In near future, 7 new airports in Saharanpur, Muradabad, Aligarh, Azamgarh, Shravasti, Chitrakoot and Sonbhadra and 2 new international airports in Noida and Ayodhya will be established. With this, Uttar Pradesh will have 18 domestic and 5 international airports, he added.