AMRITSAR: Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport continues to experience record traffic growth both for domestic and international passengers. The figures released by Airports Authority of India (AAI) show international traffic for February 2018 increased by 32 percent over the same month in past year and the domestic traffic increased by 86.6 percent, highest among all 34 international airports in India. Total footfall of passengers crossed over the 2 million for the period April to February of the financial year 2017-18.
Amritsar also ranks at the top place in domestic growth across international airports in the country with 63.4% rise in domestic traffic in eleven months (April to Feb) of the current fiscal 2017-18. Total monthly traffic at the airport also reached an all-time high of 2.28 lakh surpassing previous month all time high of 2.23 lakh passenger.
Referring to these recently released figures, Sameep Singh Gumtala, Secretary Overseas, Amritsar Vikas Manch (AVM) stated that “AVM is very encouraged with the increased traffic at Amritsar Airport”. He gave credit of the February international traffic growth to introduction of Air India’s Birmingham nonstop flight and Turkmenistan Airlines increasing capacity by upgrading aircraft to Boeing 777.
Gumtala further stated that Turkmenistan Airlines has been very popular with passengers travelling to UK and the airline now provides five flights a week to Birmingham via Ashgabat. It is also connecting Amritsar with London, Paris, Frankfurt. Mr. Gumtala stated that the response to the Air India’s Birmingham flight has been very positive with the passengers and we look forward to Air India making this to a daily flight. Manch requests Air India to start the long-awaited Amritsar-Toronto flight for the large number of Punjabis travelling to Canada, said Gumtala.
Manch airport affairs representative Yogesh Kamra said that despite large increase in domestic traffic to hub cities Delhi and Mumbai, Indian carriers did not add any new destinations. Domestic airlines like GoAir, Air Asia India, Zoom air have not started flights to Amritsar. Manch request airlines in India to consider other routes from Amritsar to Patna, Kolkata, Goa, Pune, Nagpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Surat and airports in Kerala for tourists to travel seamlessly between major tourist destinations to and from Amritsar, said Kamra.