‘Poor air connectivity reducing tourist footfall in Aurangabad’

AURANGABAD: A delegation of the Tourism Promoters Guild (TPG), a city-based association of tour operators and travels agents, urged the tourism and civil aviation minister Mahesh Sharma, to improve the facilities in the city so that it would give an impetus to the growth of the tourism industry.
The team led by TPG president Jaswant Singh and Shrikant Jogdand also urged the minister to immediately restore flight IC-491 and IC-492 which brought maximum tourists to Aurangabad from Delhi and different cities of Rajasthan.
The delegation met the minister at the 31st annual Indian Association of Tour Operators’ (IATO) convention held at Indore, last week.
The team appraised the minister about the tourism potential as well as the problems being faced by the tourism sector due to poor or almost no connectivity to other tourist destinations in India. They also requested the minister to look into restoring of the flight IC 491 and IC-492 which earlier had brought maximum tourists to Aurangabad from Delhi and Rajasthan.
It was also brought to the notice of the minister that looking at the oversaturation of aircraft parking at the Mumbai airport and since Pune airport being defence airport, the advantage of utilising the parking space at the Aurangabad airport, which can easily take six wide-body aircrafts at the new terminal and two in the old terminal, should be explored.
The delegation also brought to the notice of the minister that similar issues were discussed last year with the then tourism and civil aviation minister, but no action was initiated.
“Sharma has assured his full support and also requested to pursue the issues so that necessary steps can be taken,” said the delegation.
IATO president Subhash Goyal assured full support in restoring the flight to Rajasthan, however requested for the complete database of the flight load from Air India office locally so that the same can be followed by the newly appointed CMD of Air India Ashwini Lohani.
“The TPG would be requesting the local Air India office for the complete database to be sent to the CMD of Air India in this regard,” said Singh.