Residents' hope soars on Ludhiana-Delhi test flight

LUDHIANA: Residents, finally, are hopeful that the city airport would soon witness a regular 48-seater flight to Delhi as the first test flight took off from here on Saturday.
Sources say five observers and two pilots reached here from Delhi on the 48-seater plane. They gave the green signal, stating that things were on the right track.
Though official records mention that regular flight would start from May 5, authorities are not ready to announce the exact date.A Dasgupta, manager of engineering wing of Air India says, “All things are streamlined and we are hopeful that we will be able to start operations in second week of May.”
Earlier, a six-member committee led by Siddhi Unniyal, commercial manager of Air India, checked the commercial segment, security arrangements, ground support engineering, fire fighting operations and passenger facilities.
Sources say few months ago, nearly Rs 12 crore was spent on recarpeting of runway and renovation of other infrastructure. Plans of starting 72-seater aircraft were afoot since 2002. This year too, from March 28, Kingfisher airlines was supposed to start business here but failed.
Speaking about it, VP Jain, incharge (airport), says, “I have lost count of how many times the flight has been proposed from the past eight years. Hopefully, the Air India authorities are now assuring that regular flight will be started. I do not have an idea if it will be realized or not but we do not have any option rather than to believe them.”
The test flight has once again raised hope in the minds of citizens. Sanjivan Singh, a resident of BRS Gurdev Nagar says, “It will really be a blessing as the test drive means the authorities are serious about introducing the same.”