New Delhi, August 4: Coastal Digest, the dynamic Mangalore-based news portal has again stepped up its efforts towards securing a concrete assurance from the Union Government and the Air India authorities on starting a direct flight service from Mangalore airport to major cities in Saudi Arabia.
The managing director of the news portal Mohammed Asif held a series of meetings with several Union ministers including Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi, Corporate Affairs Minister M. Veerappa Moily and Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge over the last week in New Delhi to impress upon them the need to start the new service.
Air India Express, the subsidiary of Air India, currently operates flights from Mangalore Airport to Gulf countries, but despite repeated requests over the last few years is yet to start flight services to Saudi Arabia, where the largest number of Indian expats are based.
There have been demands from the Saudi-based NRI groups for starting the service and several memorandums had been submitted to the representatives of the Government of India, including the former Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.
Coastal Digest has also been in the forefront of this agitation and had tried to drive home the importance of starting the service on this particular sector by meeting the ministers and also writing a series of articles on the issue.
The efforts appeared to have paid off as Air India in principle agreed to start the service a year back. It is also learnt that the airliner had also decided on a date for the inaugural flight to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, direct Hajj flights from Mangalore also started operating. However, the Mangalore air crash on May 22, 2010 and a few other factors came in the way of realizing the decade-old dream of the Saudi-based NRIs.
To mount pressure on the Union Civil Aviation ministry and Air India, Coastal Digest decided to rope in the support of the top Karnataka-based ministers’ support for the cause. Accordingly Mr Asif, along with the KPCC secretary G.A. Bava, met Mr. Moily and Mr. Kharge in New Delhi and discussed the issue with them.
The delegation also met the two AICC general secretaries Oscar Fernandes and B.K. Hari Prasad and requested them to join their hands for the noble cause. As per our request, all the four leaders have sent separate recommendation letters to Aviation Minister Mr. Vayalar Ravi demanding him to address the issue at the earliest.
The letter sent by these leaders highlights the fact that Saudi is home to around 2 lakh NRIs from Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and North Kerala regions and thousands of families and individual travellers have been forced to travel via Mumbai, Bangalore and other terminals during their to and fro journey causing unnecessary delay and financial burden.
“Due to the lack of direct flights between Mangalore and Saudi Arabia, passengers have to wait for several hours at connecting airport to get a domestic flight to Mangalore, which is time-consuming and the waiting time is usually more than 12 hours,” the letter written by Mr. Moily, a copy of which is available with the CD, stated.
The new service will also attract a large number of pilgrims who travel to Saudi round the year for Umrah. “Jeddah is the nearest airport for the holy city of Makkah and thousands of pilgrims from coastal Karnataka visit Makkah every year,” he pointed out.
The Coastal Digest team also held a very fruitful discussion with Mr Vayalar Ravi, who directed the Air India CMD Aravind Jadhav to look into the matter on priority.
Mr Jadhav, who entered the minister’s chamber even as the discussion with Mr. Ravi was on, assured the delegation that their request would be considered positively.
“With the Airport moving to a new terminal and the infrastructural bottlenecks sorted out, there is no reason why the service should be delayed any further,” an optimistic Asif said, when asked about the future course of action.
“We will follow it up with Mr Jadhav and plan to meet him soon,” he said.
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