Foreign airlines to pay 60% less landing charges at Gaya airport

GAYA: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has offered 60% discount on landing charges to foreign airlines starting operations from the Gaya international airport, airport director Dileep Kumar said on Sunday. The concession will remain available for two years.
Asked whether the discount will also be available to airlines that increase the frequency of their flights, Kumar said concessions would also be made on landing charges to foreign airlines increasing the frequency of their flights, say from four days a week to daily or more than four days.He said concession would also be made for frequency increase, but in such cases, it would be less than 60%.
As of now, Thai, Myanmar, Bhutan and Sri Lankan airlines operate flights for Gaya. Most of these flights are seasonal in nature (October-March) when tourist traffic is more. A sizeable number of chartered flights from abroad also land at Gaya in the tourist season.
Ruing the under utilization of the airport infrastructure, former Central Bihar Chamber of Commerce president D K Jain wondered why Patna-bound flights are diverted to Kolkata and not Gaya in case of fog. About four times bigger than the Patna airport, the Gaya airport has facilities like aerobridge, something not available at Patna. Gaya airport, as per official figures, is spread over 950 acre area while Patna airport has got only 250 acres.
According to Jain, a sizeable number of Patna-bound flyers are from south Bihar and for them Gaya is a much favourable standby airport. Once the under construction Rs2000 crore four-laning of NH 83 is completed, the 100km distance between Gaya and Patna can be covered in just 100 minutes. The project was originally scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2018 itself. It is now delayed.
Asked whether Patna-bound flights could be diverted to Gaya in case of fog, Kumar said the airport was capable of handling many more flights, but there was some technical problems in diverting flights to Gaya instead of Kolkata.
Except for Air India, no other domestic flight operator has got its set-up in Gaya and as such, flights of domestic operators cannot be diverted to Gaya. Air India flights can be diverted to Gaya instead of Patna during fog or for other reasons, said Kumar.