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patna,(bihartims): after 34 long years purnea on tuesday came back on the air map of the country.
the 9-seat spirit air plane flew passengers from the chunapur defence airport, 10 km from the divisional headquarters, to patna.
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in association with bangalore-based door to door services limited (dtds) the spirit air private limited started the non-scheduled flight services on kolkata-patna-purnea and purnea-patna-kolkata routes. the flights would be operated twice a week on this route. the company is also keen to start patna-gaya non-scheduled flights soon.
wing commander viswajeet kumar gave the green signal at the 11,000-foot-long chunapur runway. the wing commander assured that he would try his best to turn the airport into a full-fledged air terminal for direct flights to new delhi and other destinations in the country.
according to spirit air personnel manager sachin prasad the bi-weekly kolkata-patna-purnea and purnea-patna-kolkata flights would operate every tuesday and saturday. if there is a positive response, its frequency would be increased. the flight takes just 50 minutes to fly from purnea to patna.
dtds officials said they would fly even with a single passenger in the nine-seat cessna 208 b karwan aircraft (c208b). on the first day of their operation, the dtds had booked all the tickets for kolkata-purnea, purnea-kolkata flights while seven seats were review amazon products and get paid reserved in purnea-patna flight while only four seats were booked in patna-purnea flight.
manager (sales), dtds, shyamal chakraborty said the ticket prices would remain the same at least for next six months. it would be on a no-profit, no-loss basis now. he further said it costs around rs 25,000 to the company for a single side operation, which includes pilot’s salary, landing and parking fee, passengers’ services and routes and navigational facilitation charges (rnfc).
however, there is a lurking fear that the service could be suspended as dtds had last june withdrawn a charter flight on the patna-jamshedpur-ranchi route, which it started in february for want of passengers.
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