Pune airport gets 10 new flights, more on the cards

PUNE: Ten new flights have been added at the city airport in the past two months.
“More flights (to tier 2 and 3 cities) are expected to be added to the airport soon with festivals such as Dasara and Diwali approaching,” an airport official said.
In the past two months, the airport got flights to Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupati, Nashik, Belagavi, Surat, Chennai among other cities.Recently, flights to Ranchi and Raipur started from Pune.
The Pune airport witnessed 170 flight movements a day before the pandemic, but the number was now between 110 and 116. “The flights to smaller cities are doing well with the occupancy touching almost 100% on most days. The daily passenger traffic has been higher than 10,000 on all days of this month. This happened for the first time after flight services resumed after the pandemic. For example, 13,287 passengers were recorded at the airport on September 18. We cab reach close to the pre-pandemic levels by December if the current situation continues,” the official added.
Aviation analyst Dahiryashil Vandekar said crowd and flight bunching were a concern and planned growth was needed.