India News | CIAL Announces Summer Schedule with 1,190 Weekly Operations

Kochi, Mar 22 (PTI) As the country plans to resume scheduled commercial international flights from March 27, the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) on Tuesday announced the summer schedule with 1,190 weekly operations.

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CIAL, which is the third busiest airport in the country, said the summer schedule will come into effect from March 27 and will be operational till October 29.

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"CIAL will have 1,190 weekly air traffic movements as against 848 during the ongoing winter schedule. CIAL's summer schedule will see 20 airlines operating to destinations abroad among which 16 are International carriers operating 261 weekly departures," the airport operator said in a release.

Indigo tops the list with 42 weekly departures to international destinations whereas Air India express will have 38 departure operations weekly. Air India Express, Air Asia Berhad, Etihad, Emirates, Oman Air, Qatar Air, SriLankan Airlines, Gulf Air are the few other prominent carriers operating frequent weekly services.

"There will be 44 weekly departures to Dubai alone whereas Abu Dhabi comes second with 42 operations from Kochi," CIAL said.

Air India will continue their three weekly operations to London and Thai Air Asia will resume its operations from Kochi in June, with four weekly direct flights to Bangkok.

After a hiatus of two years, AirAsia Berhad will resume daily services to Kuala Lumpur from March itself, the release said.

"CIAL schedules 668 domestic operations for the summer season offering connectivity with 13 cities in the country which includes 63 weekly flights to Delhi, 55 to Mumbai, 39 to Hyderabad, 49 to Chennai, 79 to Bangalore and seven to Kolkata," it said, adding that there will be daily flights to Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Mysuru, Kannur, Hubli, Agati and Ahmedabad.

CIAL Managing Director S Suhas said the zealous efforts taken by the company to smoothen the traffic during the pandemic period would have instilled a sense of safety in international airlines which has been reflected in the summer schedule.

The international airport, which had been handling 10 million passengers a year during the pre-pandemic era, implemented a slew of measures to increase the traffic during the period.

CIAL handled a total of 43,06,661 passengers during the whole year of 2021. Of that, 18,69,690 were international passengers. CIAL's passenger volume has almost increased by a million in 2021 when compared to that of 2020.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)