C T Online Desk: The government of the Indian state of Tripura has cleared the proposal for starting flights from Agartala to Chittagong soon.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha chaired a cabinet meeting on Tuesday where the decision was made, the state’s Information and Cultural Affairs Minister Sushanta Chowdhury confirmed.
Addressing a press briefing, he said: “The air link would start from Agartala’s Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) International Airport to Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong under the UDAN International flight scheme of India.”
The decision came following consultations with the federal Ministry of Civil Aviation, the minister added.
If everything works as planned, according to Sushanta, the flights would operate on the route thrice a week and the fare for each person is slated to be Rs 4,500.
Earlier the Tripura government had had a plan to start flight operations from Agartala to Dhaka and Chittagong. Biplab Kumar Deb was the Chief Minister at that time.
But when approached, New Delhi suggested choosing any of the two destinations.
“So, we opted to go for air connectivity between the state capital and Chittagong,” he said.
Hinting at the issue of getting a “proper and timely response” from passengers, the Tripura minister feared that the flights may manage to book just half their capacity.
Considering this, the government will bear an estimated expenditure of Rs 15 crore as a “Viability Gap Funding (VGF)” for over a year.
According to him, the VGF is a subsidy to be provided to the airlines selected for the flights so that they do not run into losses in the initial days after the services are launched.
Upon success on the route, the state government will do the needful to begin flight operations on the other route: Agartala-Dhaka, according to the minister.
The MBB airport, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the now-functional new terminal building on January 4, is currently the second busiest airport in northeast India with close to 1.8 million passengers in 2019, following Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport of Guwahati, the capital of Assam.
