Varanasi: The holy city on Thursday witnessed inauguration of the maiden hub-and-spoke flight of the country with Air India’s Easy Connect Flight, connecting Varanasi to the world via Delhi. Union civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu inaugurated the facility at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport. Now, travellers from Varanasi can complete international immigration formalities and check their luggage all the way through to global destinations at their home airport, eliminating the need to re-check bags during transit at the Delhi hub. The inaugural Easy Connect service, flight AI1111, departed Varanasi at 09:23 am, with international passengers on the flight connecting onward from Delhi to nine destinations outside of India, such as Dubai, Colombo, Jeddah, Riyadh, Kathmandu, Phuket.Speaking on the occasion, the minister said, “Today, we take a major step forward towards realising our vision of making air travel more accessible and building a future-ready, self-reliant Indian aviation industry that is efficient, inclusive, and globally competitive. Our new hub-and-spoke model paves way for a monumental shift in how our citizens travel – where regardless of the city in India one lives in, one can travel across the globe with ease and confidence, on India’s own wings.”“In last 12 years, we have doubled number of airports. In 2014, there were 74 airports and today there are more than 160 airports. The number of passengers has also doubled in last 12 years and number of aircraft and flights have doubled too,” he said. Naidu said, “Along with Varanasi, in next 6 weeks, six new destinations are going to be convert into this hub and spoke model. In Varanasi, a new terminal is being built at a cost of around Rs. 2,800 crore with underpass of the NH, expansion of the runway, multilevel car parking, canopy, and lighting system. To present all facilities here, our plan is to complete it in in six months. By Dec1, the new terminal building of this airport has to be completed and inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said, adding that the existing terminal has a capacity of 4 million passengers per year. With growing number of passengers, this 4-million capacity is saturated. The new terminal will have capacity for 1 crore passengers.He said, “We will launch a new UDAN scheme. In next 10 years, we have a goal of building 100 new airports under the new UDAN scheme and 200 new helipads in hilly regions. In last 10 years, UDAN improved connectivity and in next 10 years, we are going to put in Rs 29,000 crore into the scheme”. Also present at the occasion were ministry of civil aviation’s secretary Samir Kumar Sinha, additional secretary Puneet Kansal, Airports Authority of India chairman, Vipin Kumar and chief executive officer & managing director of Air India, Campbell Wilson.
