'Connecting Ancient Cities With Deep Cultural Impact': Aviation Min On Launch Of Gorakhpur-Varanasi Flight

Spice Jet airline will be operating daily flights and will deploy its Q400, 78-seater turboprop aircraft designed for shorter-distance flights on the route.

New Delhi: The first direct flight between Gorakhpur and the holi city Varanasi was flagged off Sunday. Speaking on the occasion, Union Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, called it a "historic day". He said, "two ancient cities which have a deep cultural and religious impact" on the country's history are being connected. 

"Today is a historic day as we are connecting two ancient cities which have a 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 four more cities namely Gorakhpur, Jaipur, Guwahati and Jammu", Jyotiraditya Scindia was quoted as saying by ANI. 

"Similarly, Gorakhpur which was connected with six cities will further be connected with three more cities - Varanasi, Bangalore and Kanpur amounting to nine cities in total. In Gorakhpur, we are looking to increase the capacity of the civil enclave of Gorakhpur Airport to 300 passengers from the current 100 passengers by December 2022," he added.

SpiceJet was awarded the route under the RCS-UDAN 4.1, as per a press release by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The airline will be operating daily flights and will deploy its Q400, 78-seater turboprop 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, stated the press release according to ANI. 

Scindia further emphasized that "Uttar Pradesh which had 4 airports now has 9 airports 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 constructed. With this, Uttar Pradesh will have 18 domestic and 5 international airports."

In the last 5 years, 409 routes and 66 airports have been operationalised under the UDAN scheme and over 90 lakh people have benefitted from it. Over 1 lakh 75 thousand flights are flown under this scheme.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation plans and commits to construct 34 new airports taking the total number of airports to 100 in India with 1,000 new routes under the UDAN RCS scheme by the year 2025.