Jaipur now sees less than 10 flights per day

JAIPUR: The second wave has taken everything in its grip and airlines are no exception. Due to poor passenger load in the last couple of months, flights to important destinations from Jaipur remained cancelled.
From operating 44 flights in January-February, the airport now has less than 10 flights a day. It is now left with only three flights to Mumbai, two to Delhi and one flight each to Hyderabad and Guwahati.
TOI on Thursday spoke to airport authorities and airline operators to know the difficulties faced by them and also with passengers on uncertain condition of flying.
From Jaipur airport, flight operations to cities such as Varanasi, Indore, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Agra, Chandigarh and Goa are almost suspended. "These are no longer regular flights. If some day operators get good number of passengers, they operate. Else flight movement to these cities is on a halt for the last 45 days," said an officer with the operations wing of Jaipur airport.
Airport director Jaideep Singh Balhara said, "We were operating almost 44 flights per day during January and February when there was significant dip in cases across the country. After cases started rising in Munbai, West Bengal and Delhi, the number of passengers opting for flights went down. Now, we are operating six to eight flights a day. Also, during January-February we had a passenger load of almost 10,000 passengers per day, including arrivals and departures. Now we are left with 1,500 to 2,000 passengers per day."
He added that many a times due to poor passenger load the flight operators had to cancel the flight.
Tour operators who were elated with the response in January and February were even planning to book advance tickets for May and June. "The worst-affected destinations were Mumbai and Delhi which saw surge in the cases from March onwards," said Gurpreet Singh, a tour operator. Similarly, flight operations were affected in cities like Jodhpur and Udaipur too.
"In January, we had 10 flights including arrivals and departures and in May it came down to 3 to 4 flights per day," said an officer from the Jodhpur airport