3 years on, Ludhiana gets its wings back

LUDHIANA: After a gap of three years, the flight service between Delhi and Ludhiana resumed on Saturday. A plane (flight number AI-9837) of Alliance Air (a subsidiary of Air India) touched down at Sahnewal Airport at 1.50pm.
The inaugural flight was given a grand welcome by water canons on both sides of the runway while the passengers alighting from the flight were received by Member Parliament from Ludhiana, Ravneet Singh Bittu, MLA Bharat Bhushan Ashu and other leaders.
On the first day, 45 passengers flew in from Delhi while 47 passengers departed from Ludhiana.
The flight which took off from Delhi at 1pm landed in Sahnewal at 1.50pm at least 25 minutes prior to its schedule landing time. According to chief pilot Sandeep Singh Gill this was because flight took a direct route over Ambala due to bad weather conditions on its regular route.
Gill also informed that installation of VOR (VHF Omni Directional Radio Range) system at Sahenwal airport has now reduced the visibility requirement for landing purpose to 1,400m which was earlier 5km.
The 70-seater flight which was running on special timings on Saturday will operate four days in a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and would normally depart from Delhi at 3pm and land at Sahnewal at 4.15pm while it will take off from Sahnewal at 4.45pm and land in Delhi at 5.55pm.
Congratulating city residents, MP Bittu said he would ensure that this flight is operated regularly and Air Deccan too starts its services soon. Air Deccan is the other airline to have bagged the contract to operate Ludhiana-Delhi-Ludhiana flights.
Others present on this occasion included MLAs Amrik Singh Dhillon and Sanjay Talwar; district Congress president Gurpreet Singh Gogi; Congress leaders Satwinder Kaur Bitti, Major Singh Bhaini, Rajeev Raja, Bhupinder Singh Sidhu; deputy commissioner Pardeep Agarwal; SDM Amarjeet Bains; airport director AN Sharma; terminal manager Mahesh Babbar; deputy director Amardeep Nehra; regional director of Air India Minakshi Dua; CEO of Alliance Air C S Subbiah; co-pilot Sumit Tomar and captain Vivek Bharti.
Railway crossing a cause of concern
The railway crossing located just a whisker away from the gate of the Sahnewal airport might prove to be a big hurdle in the success of the air services from Ludhiana. During the first day of operation of the flight, the crossing closed several times. At 3.25pm, the crossing was closed for about 10-15 minutes causing inconvenience to the public.